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DUBLIN CASTLE. 



UY 



M. O'CONNOR^ORRIS, 



Author tf " Rambles in the Rocfy Mountains^ " Triviata," &*£. 



I 



LONDON: 

HARRISON AND SONS, 59, PALL MALL, S.W., 

J^nkBzikxs to l^e ^xutn uxih $.$.$. t^t ^rma of S&aUs. 

1889. 



* • 

• if - • 
•••• 



LONDON : 
HARRISON AND SONS, PRINTERS IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY, 

ST. martin's lane. 



PREFACE. 



In presenting this slight historical sketch of 
Dublin Castle, which at this moment is supposed 
to be somewhat in the parlous position described 
by Hamlet, ** To be or not to be, that is the 
question," and is, therefore, invested with extrinsic 
interest, the author begs to disclaim any pretence 
to original research or insight, or, indeed, to 
originality of any kind. He has, however, 
gone to the most generally accepted sources of 
authentic information, has read a great many 
volumes connected with the subject, by such 
writers as Bagwell, Lecky, Gilbert, Plowden, 
Carte, Wraxall, Prendergast, Forster, Spencer- 
Walpole, Halliday, Macaulay, Charles Greville, 
and many more, and endeavoured to set forth 
a fairly accurate picture of the Castle and its 
Gesta, and of the more remarkable tenants of its 
venerable walls, neither extenuating anything, 



IV 



nor setting down aught of malice, whether pre- 
pense or otherwise. 

To illustrate the reigns of the Castellans it 
was necessary to make a sort of running com- 
mentary on the events of Irish history — history 
which has been written with varying aims — with 
political purpose by some writers, and without 
the knowledge which recent work in the Record 
Office has made accessible ; for instance, Lingard 
minimises the massacre of Protestants in Ulster 
in 1 64 1, while many writers exaggerate, even 
to the point of absurdity, that terrible calamity. 
Clarendon is silent as to the Glamorgan Treaty, 
which is a guiding light in the study of that 
crisis of our Constitution, while, to come to minor 
matters, that very clever and interesting author, 
Mr. Spencer Walpole, shows a nescience of the 
topography of Dublin when he talks of the 
views to be gained from that very minor mound, 
** The Hill of Clontarf," which O'Connell pro- 
posed to make his bema — when he gathered to- 
gether his braves at Clontarf — like King Brian 
Borhoime. 



It is the fashion of the day to blame English 
misrule for any poverty, turbulence, and im- 
patience of law that is witnessed in modern 
Ireland ; and certainly the teaching of history 
confirms the injusta noverca argument up to 
a certain point ; but ever since the Reform Bill 
Ireland has been dealt with with fair liberality — at 
least with liberal intentions by the English Legis- 
lature ; and it may be questioned whether, if 
Ireland had been subjected to any other great 
power she would have fared half so well, while 
the political enmity to England which permeates 
a portion of Ireland, and which is sedulously 
fostered by a section of her Press, that has 
apparently adopted the rtle of the ancient bards, 
poets, and rhymers, who kept up the odium 
Angltcanum at fever heat in Wales, Scotland, 
and Ireland alike for so many decades, is shared 
in a mitigated form by Wales and Scotland, for 
the Welsh and Irish have been bitterer foes, 
though claiming kindred, than ever were English 
and Irish ; moreover, English statesmen may 
claim that they have raised t/ie people of Ireland 



a 2 



VI 



to «i far higher level than they would probably 
have attained, or ever did attain, under autoc- 
thonous chiefs, or an oligarchical Parliament, 
from which tluy were entirely excluded. Histo- 
rical perspective requires a distant standpoint, 
and we are still comparatively very near to the 
much-debated Union ; whereas Scotland, where 
the fires of national hatred burnt even more 
fiercely than in Ireland, is a long way removed 
from the date of her union and incorporation which 
is generally pronounced to have been an immense 
boon to both countries. Yet Scotland has not 
renounced one jot of her nationality or traditions ; 
though we believe the public display at the last 
Glasgow Exhibition of such English perfidies as 
the order for the Massacre of Glencoe, or the 
view of the personal paraphernalia of the Bruce 
of Bannockburn, did not lead even to indignant 
newspaper leaders, or to more appeals to ** Scots 
wha hae," &c. Protestant ascendency, the almost 
necessary consequence and corollary of unfortunate 
rebellions and revolutions in Ireland, is haply a 
thing of the past, ignored in theory or practice, a 



VII 



hatchet to be buried by both belligerents, who 
have each had their triumphs and reverses, and 
should allow Benburb to balance the Boyne, and 
Londonderry Limerick. 

The territorial system of Ireland, which had 
a certain element of feudalism in it, is fast 
crumbling to pieces under enlightened legislation 
and the spread of free trade, aided by increased 
facilities of transport. The plausible fiction, that 
the landlords of Ireland were a grasping, griping, 
rapacious class, is dispelled by the testimony of 
Gladstone, and the evidence of a generous adver- 
sary, who wrote thus apropos of the famine era : — 

** The majority of resident landlords really did 
all in their power. When the famine appeared 
many landowners found themselves on the verge 
of ruin. They had inherited property that was 
already heavily mortgaged. The money paid 
for rent did not remain in their hands, but went 
to pay their creditors. The loss of a year s rent 
brought them fatally near seizure and bankruptcy. 
They knew this, and yet it must be acknowledged 
that a great many of them who might have 



VIU 



escaped disaster by harshness towards their 
tenants preferred their own ruin." It may be 
doubted if a fairer tribute was ever paid to the 
magnanimity of a body of men. 

To the credit of their poHtical consistency, if 
to the disparagement of their financial foresight, 
the landlords of Ireland rejected unanimously 
Mr. Gladstones Bill for Home Rule, coupled 
with the magnificent compensatory offer of 
;^ 1 50,000,000 as a solatium — 

"Gladstone has proved the landlord's friend. 
Let truth be ever told ; 
When patriots said — Iet*s give them lead, 
The old man said — give gold," 

The landlords, at least those of old stock, were 
not harsh, but they were imprudent and reckless, 
and made a ductile people, to whom they were 
examples, reckless too. Tiger Fitzgerald and fight- 
ing F^itzgerald were sure to find replicas in a lower 
social stratum; and such magnificoes as **Buck 
Whalley," who for a bet walked to Jerusalem 
and played ball against its walls, or Beauchamp 
Bagenal, who inter alia fought a royal duke and 



IX 



carried off a nun from a convent, raised false stan- 
dards, vitits imitatibileSy though we cannot forbear 
some admiration of their dare-devil dash and 
gallantry. Where the landlords of Ireland failed 
was in the neglect of their own people and their 
want of cohesion and esprit de corps. Following 
the Court and Courtiers of England — Wills o* 
the Wisp that led them into sad scrapes — they 
grew to despise their own country and country- 
men, to their own sore hurt and impoverish- 
ment. Ireland might, merely to take pastime 
for illustration, have been as good a game ground 
as Scotland or England ; we know how bare 
of game it is now generally — as a theatre for 
hunting it is miles in front of England, yet 
Melton was ever an irresistible magnet to hunting 
Hibernians. Whether because Ulster, like Attica, 
8ta TO XcTTToyccDV qlv. dcTao-iaoTa ovcra, escaped to 
a great extent the constant storm of war that 
swept over richer Leinster and Munster, or 
whether she got inured to industry from her 
frequent Scotch infusions, we know not; but 
Ulster points a moral to the rest of Ireland, 



which we trust will not be lost in the general 
attornment of the people to ways of peace and 
industry. Nor would we attempt to say more 
than *'Jam satis," to those who have been the 
leaders of the popular movement, that with its 
abominable excesses and immoral aims still had 
something to admire in it — " The resurrection of 
a nation " as an English peer styled it. Yet even 
these leaders, mainly hybrid Hibernians, might 
reflect that none, or hardly any, of the old Celtic 
families are with them — O'Connells, Kavanaghs, 
O'Conors, O'Donohues, O'Mores, O'Callaghans, 
O* Neils, O'Cahans, &c., &c. Paul of Tarsus 
was not less a patriot in that he was proud of 
his Roman citizenship. 

I have abandoned my original intention of 
devoting a chapter to Anecdotes referring to the 
Castle and its tenants, though at first I thought 
that such a chapter would be the pi^ce de resist- 
ance of the volume ; and perhaps, if all the bon 
mots uttered in and about the Castle could be 
collected together, they would be very lively 
reading indeed ; but such a thing is practically 



XI 



impossible ; nor would it — to take a few samples 
— be worth the trouble to record many such 
items as that the Castle courtiers declared that 
Lord A. was the most hospitable Viceroy ever 
known, because, while others invited their guests 
to dine only, he asked his friends to ** dine and 
sleep " (but then he did the post-prandial sleeping 
himself) ; or how the Duke of B. found that some 
ladies in Dublin were so hypnotised or mesme- 
rised by their PancJie d la Romaine (to which it 
seems they were partial) that its formal use was 
discontinued ; nor how some mischievous maidens 
played a silly trick on a gallant A.D.C., who, they 
fancied, did not show sufficient entpressement to 
join his corps in the field, by sending him an 
official envelope, marked " Urgent," which, when 
opened in a public place, revealed nothing but a 
cloud of small white feathers ; nor yet how a 
provident spinster was seen folding the wing of 
a cold capon in her cambric handkerchief by a 
Castle official, who brought her a few slices of 
ham to add to her little hoard. Every Court 
has its little repertoire of jokes, and why should 



Xll 



Dublin claim exception ? But these chronicles 
of small beer hardly shine in print, though 
amusing enough to listen to. The readers of 
Sir Bernard Burke's Anecdotes and Reminis- 
cences will learn that the splendour of the 
Dublin Court was acknowledged in the days of 
the Georges and Queen Anne, and that though 
occasionally suffering from partial eclipse, it has 
had splendid recent revivals. 

I had also purposed to write a chapter on 
the topography of Dublin, and to show the 
great growth of the city and its environs from 
the time when the Liffey was approached by 
marshes, while so erratic was its flood at times 
that not very much more than a hundred years 
have elapsed since the Duke of Leinster's yacht 
made a suburban cruise in a flood tide over what 
is now the Mayfair of the capital — Merrion 
Square. It would have led too far, so I gave it up. 

Bishops, and Archbishops, too, played no 
unimportant part on the stage of Irish politics, 
from Henri de Loundres, the King's kinsman, who 
almost built the Castle, to Stone and Boulter, 



xm 

who were practically the rulers of Ireland for 
many years, and some notice of the Church might 
have been expected, but the roll of political 
prelates was not a very bright one, and the non- 
political divines, such as Usher, Berkeley, and 
Bedell have attained a more enduring fame, even 
if they did not leave fortunes of several hundred 
thousand pounds, acquired by the arts of the 
money changer, that in one or two cases have 
become historical. The Church of Ireland has 
been lately shorn of much temporal power : the 
spiritual domain is beyond the power of Prince or 
Parliament, and here it may be stated that one 
of the difficulties of the ruler of Ireland consists 
in the anomaly that in three provinces out of its 
four, and partially in the fourth, the Govern- 
ment of the island is a quasi-theocracy, adminis- 
tered by a hierarchy, that has immense power for 
good and evil, and has generally wielded it pro 
bono republiccBy as all statesmen will, I think, 
allow. One of the stock arguments for the dis- 
establishment of the present state of things is 
the assumed chronic misery of the island ; it may 



XIV 



be questioned whether agricultural distress has 
been anything like so severe in Ireland ;is in 
England, though there is more squalor, while Mr. 
Davitt very recently testified to the buoyant 
prosperity of the woollen trade, which England 
sought to extinguish many years ago. Altered 
conditions have, no doubt, affected a few indus- 
tries most cruelly, but so they have all over 
the world, especially in England. Ireland still 
recognises what Shakespeare calls ** degree," 

" Take but degree away, untune that string, 
and then what follows ? " 

for close to the Castle is a tramcar line with 
three classes, the only one I ever saw ; a hint 
that the aristocratic element is still strong, though 
temporarily suppressed. The history of the 
Castle is practically the history of Ireland. This 
remains to be written, though much good work 
has been done in preparation for it. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



The " intelligent '' foreigner (as the phrase goes) 
arriving in Dublin for the first time would be 
pretty sure to direct his steps to College Green 
to view the al fresco Valhalla of native genius, 
exemplified by Grattan, Goldsmith, Tommy 
Moore, and Edmund Burke, appositely placed 
near the national Alma Mater ; to see foreign con- 
quest represented by William of Orange sitting 
on a carty charger ; and the several great banking 
emporia, headed by the Bank of Ireland, the ci- 
devant Parliament House of the Kingdom of 
Ireland, where, however, the memorial tapestries 
are hardly in keeping with existing national 
sentiment, while the stone-cut legend on its vis- 
a-vis, the National Bank, ** Erin-go-Bragh '' is in 

A 2 



XVI 

direct opposition to Sydney Smith's counsel of 
perfection ** Erin go bread and cheese." Then 
in his career of curiosity and sight-seeing he 
would walk through Dame Street congratu 
lating himself, if a Gaul, that even here a 
tribute was paid to his native tongue, till he 
reached the Castle of which he had read so 
much, not only in the insular records, but 
more recently in the daily diatribes of the 
patriotic press, in which it was represented as 
the "fons et origo" of the many miseries of 
misgovernment, and a British bastille which 
public indignation had long ago stormed (on 
paper), a Jericho against which the trumpets of 
"the leaders of the people" and of Joshua 
himself had blown blasts of defiance for many 
a day, which, however, from want of faith or 
some other cause, had proved inoperative ; but 
to our visitor, on passing through the portals 
of the upper or lower Castle yards, the first 
impression of this stone symbol of the might 
and majesty of Great Britain would j;>e one of 



XVll 



disillusion most complete — a galimatias of gro- 
tesque Greek, Gothic, Plantagenet, and Queen 
Anne architectural styles. He had conceived 
a Place d'Armes, with all its characteristics, 
whereas a half dozen sentries and as many con- 
stables were the only outward and visible signs 
of that force majeure which for centuries had 
held the heroic race of Hibernia in thrall. 
St. James Palace and the Tower had seemed most 
mesquin mansions to his eye in London the other 
day, but here in the bureaucracy of brick build- 
ings and the pettiness of the *' palatial ** apart- 
ments, at least externally, he could discover no 
outward and visible sign of the wealth and power 
of victorious, if perfidious, Albion ! True, he 
thought the chapel looked something of a fair 
Gothic shrine while the Birmingham, or Ward- 
robe or Record tower, though all unarmed, 
and without even a gun en barbette, seemed a 
link with a most polemical past, but for the pur- 
poses of defence or aggression, or even for the 
semblance of inspiring awe, the whole thing was 



xviii 



I 



to his mind, a ghastly failure and imposition, far 
* more bourgeois than baronial ! yfh\\^, pour combley 

\ the Castle yards were hemmed in by a network of 

mean streets, the homes apparently of a poor 
proletariat. The best feature to his eye, how- 
ever, was the ample space enclosed by these two 
irregular quadrangles, for the upper yard was 280 
feet long by 130 feet in breadth, while the lower 
was 250 feet by 220. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. — 



PAGE 



The Origin of Dublin Castle — its Sieges 
and Uses as a Fortress, a Mint, a Forum, 
a Prison — an Arena for Single Combats — 
the Viceregal Lodge and Phoenix Park — 
the O'Donnel, his Escape, and Career ... 1-43 

Chapter II. (Plantagenet Period). — 

First Lords Deputy — The Butlers and Fitz- 
geralds — Knockdoe and the Earls of 
Howth ... ... ... ... 44-68 

Chafi'kr III. (Tudor Times).— 

Fate of the Fitzgerald s — the O' Mores and 
O'Connors of Faly — Sir Leonard Grey, 
St. Leger, Sidney, Sussex, and Shane 
O'Neil — Queen Elizabeth, her Wisemen 
and Warriors ... ... ... 69-92 

Chapter IV, — 

Desmond, Desolation, and Decay — Confisai- 
tions and Plantations — The Stuart Cycle — 
Strafford — Cromwell — the Restoration — 
William of Orange — the Rebellion of '98 
— the Union — the Irish People — the Land 
Question — Ulster and Sir Cahir O'Doherty 93- 1 30 

a 



11. 



Chapter V. 



Royal Rule in Ireland — the Duke of York — 
Strafford — James, Duke of Ormonde — 
Oliver Cromwell — Tyrconnell — The Earl 
of Essex — Irish Horse Culture — Pembroke 
— Carteret — Swift — Chesterfield — ^Towns- 
end — Portland — Temple — Rutland — 
Buckingham — Beresford and Fitzwilliam — 
Cornwallis — Hardwicke — Bedford — Rich- 
mond — Whitworth — the Wellesleys — 
Anglesey — Normanby — Bessborough — 
Clarendon — Eglinton — St Germans — 
Carlisle — Kimberley — Abercorn — Spencer 
— Marlborough — Carnarvon — Aberdeen — 
l-iondonderry — Zetland ... ... ... 131-282 



Chapter VI. — 



Secretaries Castlereagh, Mayo, Hicks- Beach, 

Forster, Stanley, Balfour ... ... ... 283-295 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



TO FACE PAGE 

Sir William Sidney going forth from the Castle in 

Armour. From an old Engraving ... ... 86 

(late of the Ui)per Castle Yard .. ... ... 195 

Upper Castle Yard ... ... ... ... 203 

Lower Castle Yard, with Record Tower and Chapel 237 

The Marquis of Londonderry, K.G.... ... ... 278 

The Marchioness of Londonderry ... ... 279 

The late Lord Mayo ... ... ... . . 286 

The Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. ... ... 292 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



CHAPTER I. 

" This castle hath a pleasant seat." — Macbeth. 

Very little is known about the Castle of Dublin 
prior to the Anglo-Norman Invasion, nor has it, 
I believe, been decided whether the Dun or 
Citadel of the Scandinavians is identical with 
what has been the place forte of the capital of 
Ireland for many centuries. The balance of 
probability seems to be that the fort which Milo 
de Cogan captured, by a cotip de main, was on the 
same site, though about as much the same castle as 
the Norman keep — as Queen Elizabeth's famous 
knife, which had new blades, and a new handle?, 
added to the old foundation at various intervals. 
We know that the Ostmen had been more or less 



2 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

in occupation of Dublin ever since the 9th century, 
and that if the Battle of Clontarf crippled them 
for a period, it by no means extirpated them 
from their ancient haunts, or interfered with their 
supremacy at sea. 

Having had our historical faith rudely shaken 
by the philosophical iconoclasm of Niebuhr and 
the German school, we are very apt to question 
the authenticity of annals which are more or less 
interwoven with legendary exaggerations, the 
screeching of scalds, and the poetic licenses of local 
poets laureate, whose raison (Tetre was the glorifi- 
cation of the chieftains and dynasts to whose 
personal staff they were attached ; but I believe 
there is little more reason to doubt the fact of the 
Battle of Clontarf having taken place than of that 
of Borodino or Pultowa, and a chronicler gives it 
the further verisimilitude of exactness by telling 
us how Sitric was married to a daughter of Brian 
Borhoime, and that her woman*s heart went out to 
her husband and adopted countrymen rather than 
to her own people ; while the two-handed sword 
of the Irish Generalissimo is still preserved at 
Clontarf Castle, Mr. Vernon's residence — a 
witness of the faithful workmanship of the 
armourers of those days, and the sinewy strength 
of the arms that could wield such weapons. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 3 

The excavations made for building purposes 
in the neighbourhood of College Green, once 
Hoggen's Green, where the bloody battle 
between Milo de Cogan and Hasculph long 
surged and wavered, revealed, centuries after- 
wards, broken weapons and human remains, 
faithful records of the fierce fray, and the 
Virgilian hexameter— 

*' Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris*' 
was literally exemplified. 

Moreover, it is a fact that .the strong strategic 
points picked out by the early Irish and the Ost- 
men have for the most part been retained by 
subsequent conquerors ; a corresponding fact is 
recognised very often on the Continent. 

Thus Sadowa was erst a battlefield of 
Frederick the Great. 

I think it is Walter Scott who complains of 
the general mistrust of ancient records and 
traditions. We often hear, says the Wizard of 
the North, of vulgar credulity , but there is such 
a thing as vulgar incredulity too, which finds the 
task of absolute rejection far easier, less tedious 
and exacting than that of examining and investi- 
gating> and so it is with regard to the Scandinavian 
conquests and annexations in Ireland, to which 
Mr. Halliday's researches have given us so good 



4 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

a key; but even supposing that the present 
castle occupies the Scandinavian site — and its 
position on the top of the hog-backed ridge, 
ckise to the river's edge and with a good supply 
of water (**jugis aquae**) within its area, would 
seem to confirm this idea — we know that the 
Normans were nothing if not castle-builders, for 
** the castle '* was not only their fortress and 
defence, but their means of pushing on their 
conquests and annexing fresh pastures — a fact 
which a few drives through Meath, de Lacy's 
countr)' — would confirm, ruined castles there 
being almost as common as cottages and cabins. 
Harris, the historian and topographer, has 
given us documental proof that King Henry sent 
instructions to his representative in Dublin — 
Meiler Fitzhenry — to add to and improve the 
buildings already in existence : ** The King, to 
his beloved and faithful subject, Meiler Fitzhenry 
Lord Justice of Ireland, greeting. You have 
given us to understand that you have not a con- 
venient place wherein our treasure may be safely 
deposited, and foi;*asmuch as well for that use, as 
for many others^ a fortress would be necessary for 
us at Dublin, we gommand you to erect a castle 
there in such competent plaice as you shall judge 
most expedient, as well to curb the city as to 



DUBLIN CASTLK. 5 

defend it if occasion shall so require, and that you 
make it as strong as you can, with good and 
durable walls. But you are first to finish one 
tower, unless afterwards a castle and palace and 
other works that may require greater leisure may 
be more conveniently raised, and that we should 
command you so to do : for which you have our 
pleasure, according to your desire — at present you 
may take to this use 300 marks from G. Fitz- 
Robert, in which he stands indebted to us. We 
command also our citizens of Dublin that they 
strengthen their city, and that you compel them 
thereunto if they should prove refractory. It is 
our pleasure also that a fair be held in Dublin 
every year, to continue for eight days, and to 
begin on the day of the Invention of the Holy Cross, 
another at Drogheda, on ^FtTjohn Baptist's Day, 
to continue also for eight days, with toll and 
custom thereunto belonging ; another at Water- 
ford, on the Festival of St. Peter ad Vincula, for 
eight days ; and another at Limerick, on the 
Festival of St. Martin, for eight days ; and we 
command you that you give public notice thereoi 
by proclamation, that merchants may resort 
thereto. Witness, the Lord Bishop of Norwich, 
at Geddington, 21st August, 1205." There is no 
record of the progress made by Meiler Fitzhenry, 



6 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

but we know that Henry Loundres, Archbishop 
of Dublin, refounded the Castle, so to speak — 
and the subsequent necessities of the age caused 
an infinite number of improvements and altera- 
tions to be effected from time to time, especially 
by Lionel, Duke of Clarence. 

The Castle, from its position and prestige, was 
more than once besieged, but the most memorable 
attempt to take it was in 1534. when Thomas 
Fitzgerald, eldest son of the Earl of Kildare, 
was created Lord Deputy by his father, who had 
been summoned to London. History tells us 
how a rumour had been circulated that the Earl 
had been beheaded in London, and on this his 
hot-headed son, known as ** Silken Thomas," 
hastily summoned the Council, and having 
surrendered the Sword of State into their hands, 
broke out into overt rebellion. The plague had 
raged in the town and thinned its population, but 
for all that, when news was brought that the 
O'Tooles were driving cattle they had captured in 
their raids through ** Fingall " to the co. Wicklow, 
the Dubliners turned out and attacked the 
reivers, but were grievously discomfited and lost 
heavily. This caused something of a panic, and 
Fitzgerald, taking advantage of it, craved from 
the citizens leave to march through their streets to 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 7 

besiege the Castle. This leave was reluctantly 
granted, and with the aid of a good citizen, 
Alderman Fitzsimmons, the Castle was victualled 
for the leaguer, of which supplies the Alderman 
contributed, we learn, 20 ton of wine, 24 ton of 
beer, 2,000 dried ling, and 16 hogsheads of 
powdered beef. He also gave 20 chambers for 
mines, and an iron chain for the drawbridge, 
which he had caused to be forged in his own 
house that it might not excite suspicion. Six 
hundred men were now introduced by Fitzgerald 
under six captains ; three pieces of cannon were 
planted near Preston's Inn, opposite to the Castle 
Gate, and at the same time strong entrenchments, 
with ramparts, were made to protect them from 
the Castle fire. In addition to this Fitzgerald 
threatened to place the youths of the city on top 
of the trenches. While this was going on. Sir 
Francis Herbert, Alderman, who had been 
knighted by the King, to whom he had gone for 
advice, returned with promise of speedy succour 
from his Majesty, and on this encouragement the 
gates of the city were closed, and many of Fitz- 
gerald's troops surrendered. 

" Silken Thomas,'* hearing of this disaster, 
marched to Dublin, and commenced the siege 
from Ship Street, but the Castle ordnance was 



8 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

well served, and an engineer named White set 
fire to the thatched roofs round the Castle by 
means of some artificial compound, of the nature 
of Greek fire probably. These vigorous measures 
caused the siege to be raised, and the loyalty of 
the citizens was rewarded subsequently by his 
Majesty. 

It may be mentioned parenthetically here 
that Silken Thomas had abandoned his siege- 
works to the care of a Lieutenant, when he heard 
of some cattle that were on the move, and could 
therefore probably be looted. He was successful 
in his stock-raid though not in his siege, and he 
had presently to undergo one himself in his 
** Crom a boo '* Keep at Maynooth. The epithet 
** Silken" was applied to this Hibernian Hotspur, 
or Paddyland Percy, not from any effeminacy or 
softness in his composition, but from the fringes 
of silk worn by his warriors on their morions. 

The Castle had the narrowest escape from 
being burnt by the imprudence of Dean Swift, 
who would read in bed, a very dangerous custom, 
especially when curtains were in vogue. The 
Dean's backsheesh and blandishments hushed 
up the mishap we are told. 

The following account gives a fair idea of the 
old fortress, which, in 1783, it was proposed to 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 9 

supersede by a regularly planned modern citadel, 
designed by Sir Bernard Gomme, but which was 
never erected. The entrance to the Castle was 
then, as it is now, from the north side, but there 
are no remains of the drawbridge that led to it by 
two strong towers, called the ** Gate Towers." 
The gateway between them was furnished with a 
portcullis armed with iron, such as may be seen on 
the Somerset Shield — this was intended as a 
second defence in the event of an enemy surprising 
and '* rushing " the drawbridge. To these two 
was added in later times a platform surmounted 
with two pieces of heavy ordnance. 

From the Gate tower on the west a strong and 
high curtain extended in a line parallel to Castle 
Street, till it connected it with Cork tower, so 
named because it was mainly the work of Richard 
Boyle, first Earl of Cork, of whom it might be 
said — 

** Di tibi divitias dederunt, artemque fruendi." 

This tower replaced an old one that fell in May, 
1624. 

From Cork tower the castle wall continued 
in one curtain of equal height with the former, 
till it joined the Birmingham tower, said to have 



lO DUBLIN CASTLE. 

been built either by John Birmingham, Earl of 
Louth and Atherlee, Lord Justice in 1321, or else 
by Walter Birmingham, who filled the same office 
in 1548; while others trace its name to William 
Birmingham, who, with his son Walter, endured 
in 1 33 1 a long , imprisonment within its walls. 
(Some of the cells are still to be seen.) 

From the Birmingham tower the curtain goes 
on to the Eastern Gateway tower at the entrance 
into the castle — a building oblong and quad- 
rangular, which was strengthened by a broad, 
deep moat, in which a detenu, who was making his 
escape, now and then spent the greater part of 
the night, till rescued by some marauding 
O'Byrnesor O'Tooles early next morning. 

Beyond the Castle walls, towards the east, 
was a chapel, the Provost Marshals prison, an 
armoury, the workhouses of the armourers and 
smiths attached to the artillery train, and the 
stables of the chief Governor. There also at one 
time were the quarters of the groom-porter or 
croupier — an office not now recognised — and the 
offices of the Ordnance Department, for that of 
War and the Treasury, and for the Registry of 
Deeds and Conveyances throughout the island. 
Formerly there were two sallyports or postern 
gates in the Castle walls — the one near the Bir- 



DUBLIN CASTLE. II 

mingham tower, the other affording a passage to 
the Castle yard. The former was closed in 1663 
by order of the Duke of Ormonde, then Lord 
Lieutenant, on discovering the plot of Jephson, 
Blood, and others, to surprise the Castle by 
its means. The other remained for years, till 
the North tower and its curtain were pulled 
down. 

In early times the guard of the Castle was 
entrusted to a constable, a, gentleman-porter, and 
a body of warders, consisting of archers and 
pikemen: the constable receiving ;^i8 5^. per 
annum, each warder £2 5^. 6rf. In the days of 
gunpowder, arquebusiers and artillerymen were 
added. The two *' Gate Towers " were reserved 
for the constable and the State prisoners, but 
their custody was not always very secure, as in 
the instance of Lord Delvin, who conspired with 
Tyrone, Tyrconnel, Maguire, 0*Cahan, and other 
Ulster chiefs to surprise the Castle, but were 
frustrated by the loyalty of a Roman Catholic, 
who revealed the plot to the authorities. There 
was a mint in the Castle as well as at Trim in the 
CO. Meath ; and the importance of Dublin Castle 
is shown by the fact that its keeper or constable 
must be a full-born Englishman. We learn from 
the letter-press of J. Rocque's map — a most 

B 



12 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

interesting illustrated chart — that Dublin Castle 
was not converted into a regular residence 
for the Viceroys till the reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth. They sometimes lodged in Thomas Court, 
sometimes in the palace of the Archbishop of 
Dublin at St. Sepulchres, sometimes at St. 
Mary's Abbey, and sometimes at the Castle of 
Kilmainham. Thus in 1488 the Earl of Kildare 
received Sir Richard Edgcumb in the Kings 
great chamber, in Thomas Court, and there did 
honioge and took the oath of allegiance to 
Henry VII., in the person of Sir Richard. We 
read of Kildare in 1524 taking the oath of office 
in Christ Church, and proceeding thence in state 
to the Abbey of St. Thomas, Conn O'Neil 
carrying the sword of state before him, as the 
Chief Secretary of the time being — at present 
Mr. Balfour — now does. When Kilmainham 
Castle had been dismantled by a violent storm, 
Queen Elizabeth directed the Castle of Dublin to 
be repaired and enlarged for the reception of 
the chief Governor, her frugal mind discovering 
this was cheaper than repairing Kilmainham. Sir 
Henry Sidney put the coping stone on the reno- 
vated edifice. Among the Rolls may be found 

extant the Indenture between the deputy and 

« 

other officers, and George Ardglass, to do all the 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 3 

keeping and maintenance of the Castle — including 
its clock — for i6d, per diem. 

The Irish Parliament seems for some time to 
have been peripatetic, and to have had no local 
habitation. Thus Sessions were held at Trim in 
Meath, and at Kilkenny, too, and in the latter 
some of the most important enactments, and the 
most far-reaching in their consequences, were 
made ; but Dublin appears to have been, so to 
speak, the central Parliamentary station, though, 
judging by the attendance, the questions of the 
day were not often considered burning ones by 
the burgesses and knights of the shire, to whom 
attendance at the Session was often a work of 
great danger. A curious record remains of Par- 
liamentary peril from the stores of gunpowder in 
the Castle, which latterly became the Parliamen- 
tary home, as well as a forensic theatre ; for in 
1606 Chichester thus writes to the English 
Council : — 

** To bring the Court of Law again into this 
Castle were to draw them just over the store of 
munitions which not only by practice (as formerly 
hath been attempted) but by using of fire, by 
burning of some prisoners in the hand, may be 
fired, to the exceeding detriment of the State, and 
ruin of this Castle. In which respects we doubt 

B 2 



14 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

not but your Lordships will think it exceeding 
inconvenient ; and for our parts we know it to be 
so dangerous, and at no time more than now, as 
we cannot, without almost incredible hazard, ad- 
venture upon it." Chichester seems to have had 
the Gunpowder Plot on the brain, but his despatch 
led to no result, and Dublin Castle continued 
to be the ordinary hall of convocation for the 
making as well as the administration of law till the 
rebellion of 1641, and thence to the Restoration. 

During the past century the Castle has been 
almost entirely rebuilt, and the Wardrobe Tower 
is almost the sole survival of what Harris saw 
and described. The Viceregal apartments appear 
to have been in a semi-ruinous state in 1631, and 
indeed for another century were in hardly a civilised 
condition. Thus the apartment under the sitting- 
room of the Lord Deputy was a bake-house, while 
fuel was piled up in front of the gallery windows, 
and the remains of St. Andrew's Church — then in 
Dame Street — served for a stable. The Gate 
Towers — so salient a feature of the building — were 
not finally pulled down till 1750; and the old 
Birmingham tower would probably have remained 
to the present day but for a fearful explosion of 
gunpowder (such as Chichester dreaded) which 
split it into fissures, and, owing to the goodness 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



15 



I 



of the masonry, it was only with much labour 
demolished. The Castle is divided into two 
courts, commonly called yards, and the upper 
contains the apartments of the Lord Lieutenant 
and his suite ; " between the principal or Eastern 
gate, and the corresponding one {artificial only), 
the interval is occupied by a building of two 
stories, exhibiting Ionic columns, or rusticated 
arches supporting a pediment ; and from this rises 
a circular of the Corinthian order terminating in a 
cupola. This is called the Bedford Tower. It is 
appropriated to the use of the master of the cere- 
monies and aides-de-camp of the chief Governor, 
and here since the demolition of the old Birming- 
ham tower the flag has been displayed on State 
days; and here also on the ist January, 1801, 
the Imperial united standard waved for the first 
time upon the union of the two countries. The 
Presence Chamber is over the colonnade, and was 
formerly the Yeoman's Hall. The throne and 
canopy are covered with crimson velvet, richly 
ornamented with gold lace. From a richly- fretted 
ceiling hangs a glass lustre of Waterford manu- 
factory, purchased by the Duke of Rutland. 
St. Patrick's Hall, used for the installation of the 
Knights of the Order of St. Patrick, is also a 
ball room, of fine proportions, 82 feet long, 41 feet 



1 6 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

broad, and 38 feet in height. It was begun by 
Lord Temple during his Viceroyalty, and con- 
tains some good paintings, among which is one 
of St. Patrick converting the natives ; of Henry 
the Second receiving the submissions of the Irish 
chieftains; and an allegory representing George the 
Third as a benefactor to Ireland (with which view 
contemporary Catholics find it hard to coincide). 
At the back of the apartments of the Viceroy is 
a small Italian garden, to which a flight of granite 
steps leads." The lower court or yard, though 
larger than the upper, is irregular in outline, and 
built on uneven, unlevel ground. Here is the 
Ordnance Office, the Arsenal, with stores for 
40,000 men, and sundry offices. 

In the corner is the Chapel Royal, built in the 
florid style of pointed Gothic architecture, with a 
rather handsome interior. This chapel was erected 
in the reign of John, Duke of Bedford, 1807, as 
the following tablet tells us : — 

Hanc aedem, 

Deo Optimo maximo olim dicatam 

vetustate penitus dinitam 

denuo extrui jussit 

Johannes, Bedfordiae dux, Hibemiae prorex, 

Ipseque fundamenta posuit, anno a Christo 

nato MDCCCVII. 

The Chapel of the Castle of Dublin is men- 



DUBLIN CASTLE. I 7 

tioned as early as 1225, in a close roll of England, 
from which we learn that William de Radcliffe, 
then King Henry's Chaplain, received 50 marks 
as a gift from the Crown. On an Exchequer 
account of 1250 are entered payments for improv- 
ing and repairing the Royal Wardrobe in Dublin 
Castle, for repairs of the Great Hall, kitchen 
windows by the houses, chapel, and chambers of 
the Exchequer. A Plea Roll of 1728 records the 
indictment of ** Frigola," wife of Walter Mac- 
Torkoyl, for having carried to the Castle of 
Dublin linen cloths, with which he and others 
made ropes to descend the walls of the fortress. 

The chaplain of the Lord Lieutenant is now 
styled Dean of the Chapel Royal. 

The Castle seems occasionally to have been 
turned into a gladiatorial arena, or prize-fightingr 
ring. Thus, in 1528, Connor MacCormack 
O'Connor brought Teig McGilpatrick O'Connor 
before the Lords Justices (Adam Loftus, Arch- 
bishop of Dublin, and Sir Henry Wallop) and 
Council for killing his men who were under 
protection. Teig, the defendant, pleaded that 
the appellant's men had, since they had taken 
protection, confederated with the rebel Cahir 
O'Connor, and therefore were also rebels, and 
that he was ready to maintain his plea by combat. 



1 8 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

The challenge being accepted by the appellant, 
all things were prepared to try the issue, and time 
and place appointed, according to precedents 
drawn from the laws of England in such cases. 
The weapons, being sword and target, were 
chosen by the defendant, and the next day ap- 
pointed for the combat 

The Lords Justice^, the Judge and Councillors, 
attended in places set apart for them, every man 
according to his rank, and most of the military 
officers, for the greater solemnity of the trial, 
were present. The combatants were seated on 
two stools, one at each end of the inner court of 
the Castle. 

The court being calfed, the appellant was led 
forward from his stool within the lists, stripped 
to his shirt, and searched by the Secretary of 
State, leaving no arms but his sword and target ; 
and taking a corporal oath that his quarrel was 
just, he made his reverence to the Lords Justices 
and the Court, and then was conducted back to 
his stool. The same ceremony was observed as 
to the defendant. Then the pleadings were 
openly read, and the appellant was demanded 
whether he would aver his appeal ? to which he 
answered in the affirmative. The defendant was 
next asked whether he would confess the action. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 9 

or abide the trial of the same ? He also answered 
that he would aver his plea by the sword. The 
signal being given by the sound of the trumpet, 
they began the combat with great resolution. 
The appellant received two wounds in his leg and 
one in his eye, and thereupon attempted to close 
the defendant, who being too strong for him he 
pummelled till he loosened his hold, and then 
with his sword cut off his head, and on the point 
thereof presented it to the Lords Justices, and so 
his acquittal was recorded. Hooker remarks, ** that 
the combat was fought with such valour and 
resolution on both sides that the spectators wished 
that it had rather fallen on the whole sept of the 
O'Connors than on those two gentlemen.'* 

The account of this Judicial duel reminds one 
of Voltaire's description of that between Cond6 
and Turenne, in the '* Henriade." 

" Mais la trompette sonne, ils s'^lancent tous les deux, 
lis commencent enfin ce combat dangereux." 

The fitness of things, regal and vice-regal, 
demands that kings and vice-kings should have 
changes of air and scene like meaner mortals ; 
and for this reason country and suburban palaces 
have ever been found for the rulers of our realms. 



20 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

The Majesty of England has quite a wealth o 
Royal fesidences at its disposal : Windsor and 
Hampton Court in the semi-suburban zone, 
Buckingham Palace and St. James* in the urban, 
Holyrood and Balmoral in Northern Britain, 
Osborne in the Isle of Wight, but unfortunately 
none in Ireland ; though perhaps in that unfor- 
tunate island she lives as much in the hearts of 
her neglected people as in more favoured and 
prosperous places. We hav«e seen that the Lord 
Deputy or Lord Lieutenant had, in early times, 
a considerabje choice of lodgings besides Dublin 
Castle — St. Mar)''s Abbey, St Sepulchres, St. 
Thomas Court, and Kilmainham Priory and 
Castle, were at his service ; but Queen Elizabeth 
was the first sovereign who meditated a move 
into comparative country for her hard-tasked 
servants ; and, if records be reliable, the happy 
thought of ** Parking '' the Manors of Newtown 
and the Phoenix was an inspiration of hers, and 
making it a sort of official ** Pale." However, 
what good Queen Bess might have done had 
Ireland been England, and Dublin London, we 
know not ; but can guess that if she really ** meant 
it," the work would have sped on pretty fast, but 
Her Majesty's proreges had to content themselves 
with the Castle in Dublin ; nor was it till Charles 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 21 

the Second's era that the Phoenix Park con- 
ception emerged from its embryo form. 

Meanwhile, Strafford, whom contemporary 
Irishmen styled ** Black Tom," began to build 
himself a brick palace or mansion about a mile 
from Naas, on the Newbridge and Kildare high 
Road, and the remains of its massive masonry 
are still to be seen on the banks of the ** Grand " 
Canal ; nor am I quite sure the Kennels of the 
Kildare Hunt, which abut upon the gaunt and 
ruinous structure, do not occupy some of the 
space dedicated to its once princely pile. In 
Charles the Seconds reign, the mansion which 
is now known far and wide as the Viceregal 
Lodge, was bought, with its curtilages, from 
Clements, Earl of Leitrim. The Royal Standard 
floats over it whenever the Lord Lieutenant is in 
occupation — when he goes away it is taken down. 
But, though this is now the sole Viceregal resi- 
dence within the Park walls, it is certain that 
General Fleetwood, Cromweirs representative, 
lived in some lodge or other that was temporarily 
viceregal, while in Ireland, and not campaigning ; 
and history also records that Henry Cromwell, 
the Lord Lieutenant, who by all accounts was a 
po|)ular governor, retired from the Castle to this 
Lodge, and adds that, so straitened was this 



22 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Liberal Lieutenant in his ways and means, that 
the cash necessary for his transit to England was 
not at the moment forthcoming. 

Of the 1,760 acres that form the area of the 
Phoenix Park, the wall of Which is said to be 7 miles 
in extent, 209 have been reserved for the little Park 
within a Park — Imperium in Imperro — that forms 
the Viceroy s domain. This is well planted, and 
laid out with gardens in the Italian style, and 
fenced off from the surrounding Park by a deep 
and broad ha-ha — a sunken fence, which would 
stop all cavalry permanently, and would arrest 
infantry for some minutes, till fascines were thrown 
into the fosse, or planks for crossing it were pro- 
cured, to serve as a temporary bridge. The 
Viceregal Lodge somehow recalls the White 
House at Washington, U.S., the President's resi- 
dence, to my memory, though the former is con- 
siderably larger and more ornate, having, like 
Janus' temple at Rome (and not a few public 
characters in Ireland), two fronts or faces — that 
looking to the north, built by Lord Whitworth 
during his viceroyalty, is ornamented by a pedi- 
ment supported by four Ionic pillars of Port- 
land stone, from a design by Johnson. The view 
to the northward, however, is quite borne, and 
very inferior to that to the south, which takes in 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 23 

the sierra of the Dublin and Wicklow Range, 
sometimes snow-capped, but more generally of 
purple tints. The viceregal range helps to form 
a sort of official quadrilateral, consisting of the 
Parks and Pleasaunces of the Chief, Under, and 
Private Secretgiries' Lodges, covering an area of 
about 1 30 acres, more or l.ess. The Chief Secre- 
tary's is the largest in are^, and has the biggest 
mansion. 

The Viceregal Lodge may now be considered 
the permanent official home of the Viceroy, as 
it is said to be more healthy than the Castle, 
which, as a matter of faqt, is only occupied 
now during the Dublin season ; a season which 
generally sets in ** with extreme severity " 
during the Lenten term, and lasts for some six 
weeks, finding its natural close on the 17th of 
^J^rch, St. Patrick's native day according to 
current tradition. Then all " the courtiers " of 
the season assemble in St. Patrick's Hall and 
keep the Saint's anniversary jollily, if not ab- 
solutely holily (according to some standards), 
and baptise their shamrocks in something 
stronger than the pure lymph from the holy 
well honoured by his venerable name. It is a 
spacious mansion and can put up a number of 
guests, while the gardens and grounds form a 



24 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

charming and ample theatre for the Httle 
comedies that are created by afternoon garden 
parties, the lari;est of which, and perhaps the 
most promiscuous, was given by Lord and Lady 
Aberdeen, during the Viceroyalty of the former, 
when Irish manufacture in costumes and toilettes 
was absolutely de rigueur. I have already men- 
tioned that a large suhkien fence or ha-ha 
demarcates the viceregal ground from the 
Phoenix Park. On the day of Lord Spencers 
second formal entry into his Dublin dominions as 
Viceroy, just a little more than seven years ago, the 
assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish and 
Mr. Tom Burke, the permanent Under-Secretary, 
was perpetrated, before the windows of the Lodge, 
at a distance of some 300 yards or less from them. 
It is said that Lord Spencer, who had only 
entered the Viceregal Lodge a few minutes pre- 
viously, having been engaged in looking at a 
game of polo played on the All Ireland Polo 
Ground, a part of the ** 9 acres " on the verge of 
the Viceregal grounds, and almost under the 
shadow of the Chesterfield Avenue of elms, was 
with one or two officials gazing out of the win- 
dows of the sitting room that looks southwards, 
when they saw what they took to be a drunken 
brawl, but something by-and-bye, whether it was 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 25 

the flash of steel or not, opened their eyes to the true 
character of the foul fray, then they rushed through 
the French windows to the ha-ha, and some of 
them scrambled down it, but too late to avail, as 
the murderers had driven off; curiously enough 
the foul murder was viewed by a young cavalry 
officer from a little tope of trees about as far 
off as the Lodge, and he too thought it was a 
mere brawl or fight for several seconds. It 
seems strange to reflect that there was a guard 
of soldiers within hail of the spot where the 
assassination was perpetrated, and constabulary 
barracks less than 600 yards distant, not to 
speak of park-keepers and rangers. Reverting to 
the Viceregal Lodge, it may be mentioned that 
Lord Hardwicke, in 1802, during his Viceroyalty 
added wings to the building. Between the house 
and the Chief Secretary's Lodge is the racquet 
court, and just beyond that, in a delightful glade, 
is the cricket ground, where many a good match 
has been played since Lord Carlisle's time, who, I 
think, first associated the Lodge with this great 
Pan-Anglican summer pastime. Lord Carlisle did 
not play himself while Viceroy, but took the 
liveliest interest in the matches and scored them. 
Lord Spencer also relaxed the tension of the 
official bow by a little mild play, but the 



26 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Strongest eleven that the Viceregal grounds 
have known for some time has been got together 
during Lord Londonderry's reign. His Ex- 
cellency plays a good deal himself, and is the 
cause of much play in others, as he always has the 
I Zingari men over in August, and puts them up at 
the Lodge, and is equally hospitable to their Irish 
imitators, the ** Na Shulers." Half way between 
the Viceroy's Lodge and that occupied by the 
Chief Secretary is the column erected by Lord 
Chesterfield during his reign, on the top of which 
is a stone presentation of the fabulous Phoenix, 
the bird wliich took such a hold of Herodotus' 
fancy, and that possibly may have suggested to 
the Aryan mind the rite (or wrong) of " Suttee ;" 
the Phoenix on the column is in the act of fanning 
with its wings the pyre that is the source of suc- 
cession for future Phoenixes. On one side is the 
inscription : — 

" Civium oblectamento 

Campum rudem et incultum 

Ornari Jussit 

Philippus Stanhope 

Comes de Chesterfield 

Prorex." 

On the other the tablet declares that — 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 27 

" Impensis suis posuit 

Philippiis Stanhope 

Comes de Chesterfield 

Prorex." 

We need not pause to offer conjectures on the 
curious title to the Park, namely " Phoenix ; " 
certain it is that the manor that formed a large 
portion of it was early styled as ** Phoenix," 
though there is a spring within it known to Irish 
scholars as Fion Uiske, which pronounced rapidly 
has some similitude of sound to ** Phoenix." In 
1787 that most social satrap, the Duke of Rutland, 
died at the Lodge, and very prematurely too. Lord 
Lifford was his chancellor, and, according to the 
precedents, he issued a summons to the Privy 
Councillors in Ireland to attend, for the election of 
a Lord Justice ; but prior to their assemblage the 
Duke of Buckingham received the appointment. 

In 1783 Sarah, Countess of Westmoreland, died 
in the Lodge, of what was called a ** miliary^' fever, 
possibly now it might be called a military fever, 
from the comparative proximity of that military 
nest of the typhoid plague, the Royal Barracks. 

The records of the Irish House of Commons 
tell us how that Mr. Thomas Conolly of Castle- 
town brought in a bill to settle the Viceregal 
Lodge on Grattan and his heirs. The bill, how- 

c 



28 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

ever, did not pass, as might have been anticipated. 
Passing to the history of the Phoenix Park, most 
of it appears to have originally belonged to the 
Templars, from whom it was taken at their 
degradation and disestablishment, and transferred 
to the Knights' Hospitallers of St. John, located 
at Kilmainham Priory. The lands of Chapel Izod 
(or of La belle Isolde or Isode) were acquired from 
Sir Maurice Eustace, those of Upper Castlenock 
from J. Warren of Corduff, Ashtown from Corcan 
of Pelletstown, and so on as to the other portions. 
Certain it is that the Manors of Newtown and 
Phoenix were annexed by the Duke of Ormonde, 
(by command) for ;^3,ooo, which must be con- 
sidered cheap for 467 acres near a city. The 
whole area, it seems, cost the Government some 
;^40,ooo. Sir John Temple built the wall round 
it, and Lord Palmerston s family hence derived 
their droits of park pasturage. The Lord Lieu- 
tenant originally derived 100 guineas from the 
pasturage, a right waived by the Duke of 
Devonshire while Viceroy. The Duchess of 
Cleveland was said to have had a settlement of 
;^i,ooo a year out of the undisposed lands round 
the Park. This was during the reign of Essex. 
The house where William IIL, the Irish William 
the Conqueror, sojourned after the battle of the 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 29 

Boyne, Is still pointed out by the banks of the 
Liffey, but it is not now within the Phoenix 
Park. 

Just now, owing to the mysterious prevalence 
of enteric fever in the Royal and Richmond 
Barracks, which seems to baffle sanitary engineer- 
ing science so far, the garrison of Dublin is living 
under canvas in a southern comer of the Phoenix 
Park, and not far from the powder magazine, 
which provoked one of the last flickers of Jonathan 
Sw^ift s most mordent wit. But prior to giving 
his quatrain, we may remark that the storage of 
powder near the Castle of Dublin had nearly 
shaken that part of the city to its foundations when 
an order went forth from the Caesar of the day 
to store the gunpowder in the new magazine. 
Swift's impromptu ran thus : — 

" Behold a proof of Irish wit, 
Here Irish sense is seen, 
When nothing's left that's worth defence 
They build a magazine ! " 

Close by it are the remains or outline rather of 
the fort projected by the Duke of Wharton, who, 
during his tenure of the sword of State, took into 
his head that an attack would be made on the 
Castle, and proposed to build this fort and entrench 

c 2 



30 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

himself therein. It is known as " Wharton s 
folly." 

It is curious how history repeats itself ; in 1 788 
the Marquis of Buckingham, then Lord Lieu- 
tenant, ordered a camp to be formed in the 
Phoenix Park, and nine years later Lord Camden 
formed another on the same ground. It must be 
recollected that the Curragh had not then been 
annexed by the Crown for military purposes and 
made an Hibernian Campus Martius. 

I have searched and searched but have been 
unable to find any trace of Irish Kings as domi- 
ciled or habittiis in Dublin Castle, or even in 
Dublin itself; for though Dublin has been for 
centuries the capital of Ireland, its heart,. and to a. 
certain extent its ville de /umtere, like Paris, there 
is no reason whatever why it should have been a 
place of primary importance in the ^te-Nprman 
era, when the sons of Heremon and Heber, 
according to the tradition, wei^e monarchs of all 
they surveyed. Indeed, there is every reason 
why it should not have been so esteemed, for the 
Irish do not seem to have been a shif>-building or 
commercial race of men, in spite of the legends of 
Niall of the nine hostages, and Dublin was but one 
of many hundred ports equally adapted for their 
petty enterprises on the ocean and by the coast. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 3 1 

They were a race of cattle-rearers and dealers, 
and their descendants understand this business as 
well as most men, and can buy and sell and get 
gain where animals of all kinds are concerned, 
from horses to hogs. Their kings and dynasts 
were merely glorified graziers who had more stock 
of all kinds than their clansmen, and who occa- 
sionally let out these herds, or parts of them, to 
their poorer dependents, very much as the 
modern salesmaster undertakes to stock a farm 
of pasture-land for a grazier of slender capital 
and little credit. Kinkora, illustrated by Moore's 
ballad-notice, *' He returns to Kinkora no more," 
was the palace and farm of the Munster 
monarchs. Galway or Galvy, well known in the 
days of Strabo and Ptolemy, was probably a far 
more important place than Dublin ; at any rate, 
only a few hundred years ago, a writer described 
it, if I recollect right, as the third city in the 
kings dominions, and from its petty port there 
was much trade to and from the Iberian peninsula. 
It probably divided with Croghan, Athlone, and 
Roscommon the patronage of the Kings of Con- 
naught. Ardmagh, the Primatial city, probably 
was the capital of the O'Neils, of Ulster. Killeigh, 
or Geashill, was probably the chief town of the 
O'Connors of Faly ; Birr of the O'Carrolls, of 



32 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Ely ; Campa, now changed to Maryborough, 
of the O'Moores, and so on ; but it was not so 
with the Ostmen, styled Danes in Ireland, 
including the white and the dark Gaels. Dublin 
was to them a port of great price, connecting 
their chain of harbours along the eastern coast, 
still recognisable by their names — such as Wex- 
ford, Carlingford, Waterford, Strangford, &c., 
and very handy for the Isle of Man, their great 
stronghold, and the Hebrides, as well as for the 
Welsh coast. They were traders and pirates, a 
combination as common as in early Greece, when, 
according to Thucydides, piracy was anything 
rather than discreditable ; so to the Danes Dublin 
was very dear, and after fighting for it with the 
Anglo-Normans, they bargained with them for 
certain rights and privileges, when they were 
beaten. To the Danes the interior of the country 
was comparatively valueless, though we know 
that inboth England and Ireland theyhad won their 
victorious way much more extensively, probably 
with a view to trade, than was generally estimated. 
In point of fact, the Scandinavian element is far 
stronger in the inhabitants of both islands than we 
imagine. In the loth century we have Malachy, 
the monarch of all Ireland, winning a golden 
torque or collar from one Danish champion, a 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 33 

sword from another — a fact that Moore alludes to 
— '* When Malachy wore the collar of gold, which 
he won from the proud invader." 

This Malachy was deposed by Brian Bor- 
hoime, or " Boromy," as Warner calls him, the 
Alfred of Ireland who for some 50 years fought 
them constantly and beat the Danes consecu- 
tively in 29 battles ; in the great fight at Clontarf , 
Leinster and its legion was arrayed on the 
Danish side, but victory at last inclined to Brian's 
braves, though it cost the gallant old warrior the 
remainder of his span of existence. He was said 
to be 76 when he died. 

Brian, as the King of Ireland, was bound to 
attend the Tara Wittenagemot when the pro- 
vincial dynasts and chiefs of septs met together 
with their bards and musicians to take sweet 
council together (and perhaps something stronger 
too) as to affairs of State. 

From the total absence of masonry or brick 
round Tara it would appear that the Royalties held 
a sort of Feast of Tabernacles, and dwelt in 
*' boolies," or wicker houses similar to those put uf> 
in Dame Street when Richard II. feasted ** the cap- 
tains and great estates " of the island in Dublin ; 
but the record of the contributions paid in annually 
by the men of Munster to Brian at Kinkora 



34 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

(independently of provincial tributes) is interest- 
ing, as showing something of the manners and 
customs of the age — these were : 1,450 oxen, 
3,650 cows, 4,800 hogs, 2,600 wedders, 100 
horses, 1,150 mantles, a fleet, well manned and 
equipped, besides guards, foot and horse soldiers, 
&c., when required. The Dalgais seem to have 
been a kind of corps of Janissaries for special 
services. 

In addition to these supplies we read that 
the Danes of Limerick sent him 325 hogsheads 
of claret per auinum ; the Danes of Dublin, 
150 pipes of wines of various sorts. We 
learn, too, that " the Book of Rights of 
Munster " is, with the exception of the histories of 
Greece and Rome, the oldest historical record 
extant. 

That gold was not wanting at the Court ot 
Kinkora we learn from the fact that King Brian 
offered 20 ounces of that metal for the shrine at 
** Ardmagh ; " while Malachy*s torque was but 
one of many similar ones to be seen at the time, 
in a perfect state, as they are now to be viewed 
in an imperfect condition, in museums. The 
Danes had, while still Pagan, a habit of plunder- 
ing abbeys, churches, and monasteries where 
records were kept, and then setting fire to the 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 35 

buildings by way of 2l feu de joie. Hence the 
difficulty of painting anything like a picture of 
that past period with such scanty materials to 
hand. The English captains, too, were not 
quite free from this species of sacrilege, and 
we fead that the Abbey of Killeigh, in the 
King's Co., of which only a gable or two and 
some arches survive, was burnt down by the 
Elizabethan soldiery, with all its wealth of painted 
glass. 

These observations have been made to dispel 
the erroneous in^pression that Ireland was wholly 
uncivilised and barbarous before its annexation 
by the English Crown, and to show how there was 
no continuity of Government and institutions in 
Ireland as in England. 

The fatal arrow that tore through Harold's 
armour at the Battle of Hastings and robbed him 
of life may be said to have achieved the conquest 
of England, London, the Tower, and West- 
minster Abbey were adopted by the victors as a 
Royal fane Castle and City, where the functions 
of the Crown were held. In Ireland it was 
wholly different. Kinkora and Tara sink into 
insignificance, and the Castle of Dublin, with the 
subsidiary ones at Trim and Kilkenny, rise into 
importance and note ; yet it would be a great 



36 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

mistake to depreciate bye-gone grace and greatness 
because the erosion of time and the storm of war 
have left little trace of their existence and import- 
ance. The Cinque Ports are very tiny towns now 
— a few hundred years ago they were strong 
points on our southern coasts, and keys to 
England, more or less. Cashel of the Kings, in 
the same way, is little more now than an historic 
landmark and beacon ; even the Tower of London 
owes its grandeur to association alone. Apropos of 
the Abbey of Killeigh, in Offaly, the historian 
gives us in his pages a presentment of the 
Lady Margaret O'Connor at a great function 
held there in March, 1447, which certainly 
indicates a fair amount of civilisation and 
refinement, in mind as well as in manner and 
costume. 

'* Rich and rare were the robes she wore*' as 
she appeared seated in queenly style, and in 
raiment of cloth of gold ; and we learn that she 
opened the Congress by presenting two massive 
chalices of gold on the high altar of the church 
as an act of duty towards God, as the chronicler 
points out, and then she took two orphan chil- 
dren to rear and nurse, an act of charity to her 
neighbour. Moreover, one of the Elizabethan 
Viceroys records that in his progress from Clare 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 37 

to Connaught he was with his suite very hand- 
somely entertained by a country gentleman of 
the period, Sir John 0*Shaughnessy, whose style 
of living made a considerable impression on the 
Deputy's mind — possibly it may have been le 
bonheur de CimprevUy the less expected the more 
welcomed ! 

We have noticed one or two escapes from 
the duresse of the Castle, probably due to the 
disloyalty of some of the warders to their 
Sovereign (or loyalty, if it may be so called, 
to their own race), just as Stephens, the 
Fenian ** Head-Centre," was allowed to escape 
from Richmond State Prison, and, after re- 
maining perdu for a considerable time in 
Dublin he made his escape in disguise to the 
Continent. 

A more dangerous rebel, or patriot (from 
whichever standpoint you judge), than any we 
have noticed was allowed to make his escape 
from Dublin Castle, to deal death and destruction 
by-and-bye to the English and Scotch who 
were arrayed against him. '* This enterprising 
chieftain," says a writer in the ** Dublin Penny 
Journal," date 1832-33, **was the son of Hugh, 
Chieftain of Tyrconnell ; his mother's name was 
Inneen Duff (dark Ina), daughter of Macdonnell, 



38 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Lord of the Isles. He was born in the year 
1571 ; in early life he not only displayed con- 
siderable genius and independence of spirit, but 
he made these qualities acceptable to his country- 
men by the noble generosity of his manners and 
the matchless symmetry of his form. In former 
times the O'Donnels of Tyrconnell and the 
O' Neils of Tyrone were often addressed by the 
English Monarch as equals, and sometimes called 
on for aid against foreign foes, and occasionally 
written to as Kings, and it was therefore natural 
that young Hugh should desire to substantiate his 
independence, so often acknowledged. He made 
no secret of his intentions, which were soon the 
subject of conversation all through Ireland, and, 
reaching the ears of the Lord Justice, created no 
small alarm at Dublin Castle. Sir John Perrot, 
then the head of the Irish Government, instead of 
endeavouring to gain over the young chieftain by 
honours and concession, laid a plot to seize him, 
which, though successful for the time, was as 
unworthy as it afterwards proved injurious. In 
the year 1587 a ship was fitted out and stowed 
with Spanish wine, and directed to sail to one of 
the harbours of Donegal. Accordingly the vessel, 
fraught with the merchandise most acceptable to a 
Milesian Chief, put into Lough Swilly and cast 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 39 

anchor off the Castle of Dundonald, near Rath- 
millan. 

" The captain, disguised as a Spaniard, pro- 
posed to traffic with the people of the fortress, and 
they, nothing loth, bought and drank until they 
became intoxicated. The people of the adjoining 
district did the same, and all the surrounding septs 
of O'Donnel, McSwiney, and O'Doherty entered 
into jolly dealings with the crafty wine merchant. 
It could not be, supposed that when all were laying 
in stores of Sack 9.nd Alicant, the young prince 
of the county should stay back. No! as was 
expected, he arrived with his followers at 
McSwiney's Castle, who sent the captain notice 
that his chieftain had arrived,, and that, therefore, 
he mu^t prepare to send soipe of his very best 
vintages in store for his use.. The captain replied 
that what he purposed to sell was already disposed 
of, but if the young prince would come on board 
he would let him taste some of his choicest sack, 
intended as a present to the Lord Deputy. This 
invitation was accepted ; the young chief went on 
board, and he and his followers drank of wine and 
strong liquor as Irishmen used to drink. When 
they were all intoxicated, their arms were stolen 
from them, the hatches were shut down, and next 
morning saw the vessel clear of Lough Swilly, and 



40 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

on its way for Dublin. Thus was the base design 
accomplished, and Red Hugh, in his i6th year, 
tound himself a captive in Birmingham Tower, 
where he remained for 3 years and 3 months, a 
long period for a fiery impatient spirit at such a 
period of life. 

** In the year 1 591 he and some of his followers 
descended by means of a rope on the draw- 
bridge, and getting safe off from the fortress they 
escaped towards the Wicklow Mountains, and 
reached the borders of OToole's country. There 
O'Donnel was obliged to stop — his shoes had fallen 
off his feet, and passing barefooted through the 
furze and heather that covered the hills he soon 
broke down, and his companions, consulting their 
own safety, left him with the one faithful servant 
who had assisted him and them to descend from 
the Tower. 

** This man, secreting his master as well as he 
could, proceeded to the residence of Phelim 
O'Toole, who also had been a prisoner in 
Birmingham Tower, and while there had entered 
into bonds of friendship with O'Donnel, and a 
solemn pledge of affection had passed between 
them. 

** But the 0*Toole betrayed his friend ; and the 
young chief, heavily chained and under a stricter 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 4 1 

watch, was again consigned to his apartment in 
the Tower. A second time he effected his escape, 
having by means of his trusty servant got down 
through a shore funnel into the Poddle, and 
creeping along the muddy stream, again took 
refuge in the Wicklow Hills. He did not again 
trust himself to the O'Tooles, but continuing right 
on over these high and desolate hills endeavoured 
to reach the fastnesses of Feagh McHugh 
O' Byrne, in Glen Malur. In the early period of 
their flight they were separated from Henry 
O'Neil, who had escaped with him from the 
prison, and as the night advanced, Arthur O'Neil, 
another of his companions who had also escaped 
from prison, being a heavy and inactive man, 
was obliged to give over, and he laid down 
drowsily, and slept the sleep of death. Young 
O'Donnel got a little further and stationed himself 
under a projecting rock, in order to shelter him- 
self from the snow hurricanes that swept the 
hills, and sent his servant to Glen Malur. Feagh 
McHugh, on the arrival of the servant, sent his 
servant provided with all possible refreshments 
and clothes for the relief of the fugitives. O'Neil 
was found dead, O'Donnel's young blood was still 
circulating, but his feet were dreadfully frost- 
bitten. Every hospitality that the O' Byrne 



42 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

could show to him he did, and when he 
was able to ride he forwarded him and 
his faithful servant, Turlogh Boy O'Hagan, 
on good horses towards the province of Ulster. 
On their arrival at the Liffey they found its 
usual passes guarded, for the Government were 
on the watch to prevent O'DonneFs escape to his 
own country. But the Liffey is in so many places 
fordable that he found no difficulty in passing it 
and gettiog through the plains of Meath. On 
coming to the Boyne tjiey were obliged to throw 
themselves on the patriotic fidelity of a poor 
fisherra^, who not only faithfully ferried them 
over, but also, with no small courage and address, 
drove their horses before him as cattle he 
intended to sell in the north country, and so 
driving them to where their owners were lying in 
secrjet, he furnished them with the means of 
reaching the hills of Ulster, thus regaining, after 
five years* absence, their own principalities. On 
Red Hugh's arrival, all the different septs of the 
country — the O'Donnel, the O'Doherty, the 
O'Boyle, and McSwiney — elected him as Tlie 
O'Donnel, in the room of his father, who was 
now much advanced in years and willing to resign 
his government to a bolder and a steadier hand. 
"It would completely go beyond our limits to 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 43 

recount all the adventures of Red Hugh O'Donnel 
after he became the. head of the various septs of 
the country. His long imprisonment had given 
him a cordial hatred of the English, and for a 
series of years he was the scourge and terror of 
the Government. He kept his mountain territory 
of Donegal in spite of Elizabeth's best generals, 
carried his incursions even to the remotest parts 
of Munster, and made his name be respected and 
his power feared to the very mouth of the 
Shannon. At last a fatal error — the only military 
one he was known ever to make, caused by a 
rivalry between him and O'Neil about leading an 
onset — was his ruin ; he was totally routed by 
Lord Mountjoy at Kinsale, fled to Spain, and 
died in ValladoUid in the year 1602." 



D 



44 DUBUN CASTLE. 



CHAPTER II. 



f» 



" Oh, sir, it is a dolorous country, a very dolorous country. 

Dr. Johnson. 



The story of the annexation of Ireland to the 
English Crown by a few semi-French fiUibusters, 
introduced by Dermot MacMorrough, King or 
Dynast of Leinster, is too like a thrice-told tale to 
attempt to vex the public ear by its repetition ; 
Macaulay*s typical school-boy knows it well, and 
so do probably most of the historically crammed 
candidates for Civil Service employment. It 
reads like a page from Pizarro, or a chapter in the 
Cortez conquests, and we only allude to it here 
apologetically as a necessary preface to a recital 
of the earlier Viceroys in Ireland who occupied the 
Castle, and administered the Government of the 
country, **tam bene quam male," as the ** Baillis," 
Deputies, or Viceroys of the Sovereigns of 
England, during what we may term the Planta- 
genet period, when the garrison or colony planted 
in the island by strong arms and stout hearts. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 45 

dwindled and waned so perceptibly that by the 
date of the accession of the first of the Tudor 
kings, Henry VII, the Lordship of England 
had become a mere nominis umbra, unsupported 
by wealth, power, or prestige, till — so history 
repeats itself — the Crown had the utmost diffi- 
culty in finding great noblemen or men of position 
to accept the thankless and dispendious position 
of Viceroy. Lord Salisbury found himself in a 
similar plight in the present year 1889. 

A few remarks may, however, be made before 
the long list of Castle tenants is submitted to the 
reader s notice, of which the first will be that the 
assumption, often made, that Ireland was in a 
condition of civilisation very inferior to that of 
neighbouring countries at the time of the descent 
of the Norman knights on her eastern coasts, is 
quite erroneous, though it must be admitted 
that the Church monopolised much of that culture 
and civilisation. Dermot MacMorrough cannot 
be placed on an historical pedestal as a patriot 
prince, a moral monarch, or a compendium of the 
cardinal virtues. But he was a strong Sovereign. 
His wealth absolutely dazzled, by the received 
accounts, the needy Normans ; and while he had 
great influence with his lay subjects, he was by 
no means banned or ** boycotted " by his subjects 

D 2 



46 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

spiritual ; moreover, his close connection with 
Edward the Confessor showed that his position 
was recognised as a right royal one. No doubt 
his aid greatly facilitated the Norman conquests, 
and if it be objected that the Irish were very 
feeble folk to yield to such slender forces, it must 
be recollected that the latter had no combination 
to resist, and that whereas the conquest of 
England was achieved by a single battle, that of 
Hastings, the conquest of Ireland has occupied 
some seven centuries. Moreover, the spiritual 
puissances were arrayed against them, seeing 
that Henry II. was the ally and executant 
of the Pope, and that his title was confirmed by 
the Bull of a second Bishop of Rome. Looking 
now to the past through the glasses of experience, 
we could wish that the invading force had been 
stronger, or equal at least to the estimate made 
by Agricola for the conquest of the island, namely 
a legion, or 10,000 men. 

Hugh de Lacy, then, was the first holder of 
the Sword of State, and wearer of the Cap of 
Maintenance, which are the outward and visible 
signs of Viceroy alty. He was a great castle- 
builder, and having extended his dominion into 
what is now the King s County, Faly, or OfTaly. 
he began to build a castle at Durrow, but in the 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 47 

midst of his work he was beheaded by an angry 
Irishman not far from the place where the Earl of 
Norbury was assassinated in the ** forties." He 
had married a daughter of Roderick O'Connor, 
and thus paved the way for the assimilation by 
the Celts of the Norman adventurers, the con- 
sequences of which were most disastrous to the 
English Raj. 

Strongbow, or Richard Fitzgislebert, Earl of 
Strigul, the reputed conqueror of Ireland, was the 
second Viceroy ; he was married to Eva, King 
Dermot's daughter and heiress. He died in 
Dublin, and was buried by Archbishop Torcan 
O'Tuathal, generally known as St. Lawrence 
O'Toole, in Christchurch Cathedral, where his 
tomb remains to this day, preserved with extra 
care, perhaps, because rents used to be payable 
upon it. 

The third Viceroy was William Adelm de 
Burgh, who was the ancestor of the Earls of Ulster, 
the Earls and the Marquises of Clanricarde. The 
de Burghs, till they degenerated, were the most 
powerful subjects of the Crown in Ireland, their 
precedence was recognised, and they intermarried 
with Royalty. 

Next, Prince John (afterwards King) occupied 
Dublin Castle as ** Dominus Hiberniae," and we 



48 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

are. now within the historic pale, for in his suite 
was Giraud de Barri, generally known as Giraldus 
Cambrensis, whose account of Ireland is very 
interesting, if slightly inaccurate. Then came: 
Hugh de Lacy the Second ; William le Petit ; 
William, Earl Marechal ; Pierre Pipard ; Hamon 
de Valoques ; Meiller Fitzhenri, a bastard son 
of King Henry I. ; John de Gray, Bishop of 
Norwich, who built Athlorte Castle, on the 
Shannon ; Geoffroi de Marreis, the Justiciary ; 
and Henri de Londres, a great-grandson of 
Dermot MacMorrough, and brother-in-law to 
Henry HI. of England and Alexander H. of 
Scotland. He was a powerful Governor, and in 
his reign the Castle of Dublin was greatly im- 
proved, and almost rebuilt 

Then Walter and Hugh de Lacy adminis- 
tered the Government, followed by Geoffroi de 
Marreis, in 1226. In his time the stipend of the 
office was fixed at ;^58o per annum, a sum 
seemingly very small, yet not so entirely incon- 
siderable or disproportionate when measured by 
the pay of a knight, namely, 2s. a-day ; but for 
this stipend he had to find 19 fully-armed or 
panoplied horse soldiers, himself the 20th. 
About this time the great Norman families of de 
Lacy, de Ridelisford, and Gislebert, Marechal» 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 49 

Earl of Pembroke, became extinct in the male 
line. The five daughters of the last-named 
nobleman were great-granddaughters of Dermot 
MacMorrough, and co-heiresses. They married 
into the most powerful families of England, so that 
the best blood of England is largely infused with 
Irish ichor, and the process of interfusion has gone 
on steadily ever since. 

We have, then, in the list of Governors — 

Maurice Fitzgerald. 

Prince Edward, nominated Lord of Ire- 
land. 

Alain de la Zouche. 

Etienne de Longue Ep6e. 

Guillaume le Dene. 

Sir Richard la Rochelle. 

Jean FitzGeoffroi. 

Davide de Barry, ist Viscount of Butte- 
vant 

Sir Robert D'ufforl. 

Richard d*Exeter. 

Jaques d'Audeley. 

Sir Jeffroi de Joinville. 

Sir Robert d'Ufford. 

Estevene de Foleburne, Archbishop of 
Tuam. 



50 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Jean de Saundford, Archbishop of Dublin. 
Guillaume de Vesci. 
Guillaume de la Haze. 
Guillaume d'Odingselle. 

Then Fitzmaurice, father of the first Earl of 
Desmond, who took an ape for his cognizance, 
having, when a baby, been rescued in a marvel- 
lous manner by sympathetic Simian. 

Sir John Wogan. 

In his reign the Templars were disestablished in 
Ireland, and their temporalities handed over to 
the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, 
who thus acquired Kilmainham Priory. He was 
succeeded by 

Sir Guillaume de Burgh, 

and he by Piers de Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall. 
Then came Sir Edmund le Botiler. of the present 
** Ormonde ** family (though Ormonde is but 
eponymous of the title), who caused such peace 
in the country that it was said he could travel from 
Arklow to Limerick with an escort of three horse- 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 5 1 

men, a distance of between one and two hundred 
miles. Then — 

Theobald de Vaudun, 

and Sir Edmund le Botiler again. He was unable 
to cope with Robert Bruce, of Scotland, and was 
succeeded by Roger de Mortimer, who also 
suffered defeat ; nor was Bruce arrested in his 
career of conquest till encountered by Jean de 
Bermingham, who shattered his power and killed 
him in battle, but not till the Scots had practically 
ruled most of Ireland for three years. Thomas 
Fitzjohn Fitzgerald was the next Viceroy, fol- 
lowed by Jean de Bermingham, Earl of Louth. 
Next came — 

Sir Ralph Gorges. 

Sir Jean D'Arcy. 

The Earl of Kildare. 

Roger Utlaugh, Prior of Kilmainham. 

William de Burgh, killed by R. de Man 
deville. 

Sir Antoine de Lucy, Baron of Cocker- 
mouth. 

Sir Jean D'Arcy, 

Sir Thomas de Burgh. 



52 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Sir John de Cherlton, Baron of Powys. 

Thomas de Cherlton, Bishop of Hereford. 

Roger Utlagh. 

Sir Jean D'Arcy. 

Sir John Moriz (Deputy-Governor). 

Sir Raoul D'Ufford. 

Sir Roger D'Arcy. 

Sir John Moriz. 

Walter de Bermingham. 

John de Carew. 

Thomas de Rokeby (a strong Governor). 

Maurice, first Earl of Desmond. 

Thomas de Rokeby, who died at Kilkea 

Castle. 
Almaric de St. Amand. 
Prince Lionel, Earl of Ulster, Duke of 

Clarence. 
Gerald, fourth Earl of Desmond. 
Sir William de Windsor. 
Maurice Fitzthomas, fourth Earl of Kildare. 

Prince Lionel added considerably to the Castle 
of Dublin and its armament. In virtue of his 
high rank he was allowed 13^. 4^. per day. He 
married en seconde noces (his first was the de Burgh 
heiress) Violante, daughter of Galeazzo Visconte, 
and received with her a dowry of ;^200,ooo, but 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 53 

died soon after his wedding. Gerald, fourth Earl 
of Desmond, known as ** the poet," succeeded to 
the Viceroyalty. Then — 

Sir William de Windsor. 

Maurice, fourth Earl of Kildare. 

James, Earl of Ormonde. 

Edmund de Mortimer, Earl of March and 

Ulster. (He died at Cork.) 
Dean John de Colton. 
Roger de Mortimer. 

Philip de Courtenay, of Powderham Castle. 
Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Duke of 

Ireland. 
Sir John de Stanley. 
James, third Earl of Ormonde. 
Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. 
Roger de Mortimer. 
Reginald Grey de Ruthyn. 
Thomas Holland, Duke of Surrey. 

Then we have — 

Alexander de Bascot. 
Prince Thomas of Lancaster. 
Sir John de Stanley. 
Thomas Cranley, Archbishop of Dublin. 
141 3. Sir John Talbot. 



54 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

James, fourth Earl of Ormonde. 

Edmund de Mortimer, Earl of March and 

Ulster (killed by the Plague). 
Sir John Talbot. 
James, fourth Earl of Ormonde. 
Sir John de Grey. 

Sir John Sutton, fourth Baron of Dudley. 
Sir Thomas le Strange. 
Sir Thomas Stanley. - 
Sir Leon de Welles, sixth Baron of Welles. 
James, fourth Earl of Ormonde. 
Earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford. 
Archbishop Talbot. 
Richard Nugent, Baron Delvin. 
Richard, Duke of York. 
Earl of Wiltshire. 
George, Duke of Clarence. 
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. 
John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. 
Richard, Duke of York (and of Carlow). 
Earl of Kildare. 
Edward Prince of Wales. 
Earl of Lincoln (John de la Pole). 

During the 3CX) years and upwards covered by 
the Plantagenet puissance in Ireland, there seem 
to have been some hundred deputies, lieutenants 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 55 

or viceroys, bailHes or justiciaries, most of whose 
names and titles I have inserted. 

Of the majority it might be said, as of Colas 
in the French epigram—: 

** Colas est mort de maladie 

Tu veut que je t*en plains le sort, 
Que diable veut tu que je t'en dit ? 
Colas vivait ; Colas est mort ! '* 

These ** Colases " played their part on the 
Irish stage for the most part without any great 
display of purpose, principle, or energy. A few 
shine out conspicuously on the pages of history — 
** velut inter ignes Luna minores." 

Such were the great Talbot and Sir John 
Rokeby, who said he preferred to eat from 
wooden dishes and pay his debts, to supping 
from silver and neglecting his creditors. But 
the majority were either rots faineantSy ex- 
tortioners, and oppressors, or else, owing to 
the alliances and connections they had formed 
with the chiefs of ** the Irish enemy," 
they were divided in their allegiance to their 
sovereign, and illustrated in their public conduct 
the impossibility of serving two masters, or even 
three, for the mastership of Mammon must not be 
ignored ! Great numbers of the chief vassals ol 



56 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

the Crown had, by adopting Irish customs and 
costumes, become more Irish than the Irish. 
** Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores." 

In Munster there was not much to distinguish 
the Desmonds from the O'Briens, their kinsmen. 
The loyal corporation and burgesses of Water- 
ford had no worse plague than the Poers or 
Powers. In the west and north the de Burghs 
had so utterly degenerated that they had even 
assumed the composite name of ** MacWilliam,'* 
and, unmindful of their royal race and English 
connection, had thrown themselves into the Irish 
side ; while merely to mention another historic 
house, the Berminghams, had openly cast off their 
loyalty and opposed the action of the Crown 
where it interfered with their own views and 
interests ; in fact, every baron had become a petty 
prince more absolute than his own sovereign. 

The causes of the decline of British power in 
Ireland in this period may be traced to several 
sources — first, to maladministration and malversa- 
tion ; secondly, to the constant absenteeism of the 
great feudatories ; thirdly, to the bickerings and 
jealousies of the local lords who called in the Irish 
to redress the balance of power, and thus estab- 
lished a caste, so to speak, of native **Free Lances," 
or wandering warriors, ready to take sides at the 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



57 



shortest notice. Then the diversion of Robert' 
Bruce of Scotland, who was virtually King com- 
mandant in most of Ireland for upwards of three 
years, gave a great blow to the English power 
and prestige, while the wars of England in Scot- 
land and France absorbed much of the resources 
of Ireland In men and money, and if Irishmen 
shared in the glories of Cressy and Poictiers, they 
gained nothing solid thereby ; but the great 
depletion and diminishing of the Imperial Ex- 
chequer arose from the waste of lands by constant 
" boatings " and reprisals, and the barbarous cus- 
tom of quartering horse and foot soldiers on the 
farmers of the country for lengthened periods, a 
custom known as " coyne and livery," which had 
its origin in the dishonesty of the Barons, and led 
to exactions and spoliations worse than a state of 
actual warfare. Then religion, instead of being a 
salve to the sores of the State, proved rather a 
blister, for the Norman version of the Catholic 
faith was not the Irish; and in point of fact, there 
was nearly as wide a gulf between the English 
Catholic and the Irish, as between the Irish Pro- 
testant and the Irish Catholic in later post- 
reformation days. 

Meanwhile the Irish chieftains, or dynasts, had 
grown in power and importance. The O'Connors 



58 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

of Faly, or Offaly, had frequently worsted the 
English in the field, and their chieftain, or king, 
was now regularly subsidised, or ** black- rented," 
by the Government, while the O' Byrnes, O'Tooles, 
and Kavanaghs, brought home the horrors and 
harryings of real war to the citizens of Dublin — 
reiving, killing, and carrying off their prey to 
their mountain fastnesses from under the ver)^ 
walls of Dublin and its Castle, like the modern 
brigands of Attica or Italy. The remedy for 
this state of insecurity was to **pale in" the 
portion of territory that remained in Leinster to 
the Crown — hence the term ** English pale." But 
a glance down the Viceregal List shows that the 
Plantagenet Kings endeavoured constantly to 
face the evil, not to fly from it. Many of their 
Princes were appointed Viceroys of Ireland, and 
several of the kings graduated in the school of 
Irish Politics — for instance, Henry II., King 
John, and Richard II., while Mortimers, De 
la Poles, and Clarences were Proreges or 
Viceroys. The royal choice of " good men and 
true " for this office was very limited ; for if they 
sent English officials, or ** English by birth," to 
fill it, their ignorance neutralised their honesty and 
thoroughness. If they selected ** English by 
blood," they too often found that the Celtic 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 59 

surroundings of their families had impaired their 
loyalty and fettered their freedom of action, and 
that instead of furthering the interests of their 
sovereign, they were bent upon self aggrandise- 
ment. 

** The Castle,*' which had on several occasions 
been repaired and fortified, seems, during this 
period, to have been not only the citadel or 
place forte of the English garrison, for which its 
situation on the crest or summit of the ri Ige 
running from east to west, and defended on the 
north by the river Liffey and its marshes, while 
the Podder, or Poddle, one of the tributaries of 
the Liffey, filled its fosse to a great depth on the 
opposite side, qualified it, but was the Treasury and 
Bank of the Government, as well as its Mint — the 
Master of the Mint being styled ** Percussor 
Monetae." Here were lodged ** the political 
prisoners " of the day, as well as the hostages 
taken for the good conduct of State officers — 
or native chieftains. Here were the offices of 
the Government Departments, so that ** the 
Castle " was then a very important and populous 
place. 

We have glimpses every now and then of the 
superior knowledge of cookery possessed by the 
Normans, who even then had their chefs and 

E 



6o DUBLIN CASTLE. 

cordons bleus, and astonished the more simple- 
stomached Celts by their splendid entertainments, 
varieties of plate, and costly raiment ; witness the 
feastings of "the natives" with Richard II. 
That good cheer was not lacking to the Viceregal 
staff even on their journeys is shown by the writ 
(1393) addressed by the Viceroy, James third Earl 
. of Ormonde, to the Seneschal of " the Liberty " 
of Wexford. '* By this instrument the Seneschal 
was ordered, under penalty di f^\oo, to have pro- 
vided at Ross, where the Earl meant to pass 
Christmas, all needful supplies for the Vicer^al 
housekeeping, including 40 crannocs of pure flour, 
60 crannocs of oats, 60 good bullocks, 4 boars, 
80 large and 60 small pigs, 100 geese, 100 ducks, 
200 pairs of rabbits, 100 trusses of hay, 6,000 
poultry, 6 lambs, 5 meases of herrings (a mease 
means 500 fish), 100 cod and ling fish, and 100 
salted salmons." 

The Irish ** Hobbies," meanwhile, were the 
wonder and admiration of the English knights, 
as Giraldus tells us. Irish falcons were in the 
very highest esteem; while Edward III. drew 
largely, we may conclude, on his Irish resources for 
the means of hunting -id hawking in his French 
wars. He had 60 couples of hounds with him ; 
just as Arthur Wellesley, in the Peninsula, 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



6i 



I 



varied actual war with what Somerville styled 
its " image." 

The halo of romance and remoteness begins to 
disappear with the accession of the Tudors to the 
throne of England. No longer can the page of 
history be illustrated by such marvellous hauls f aits 
as the conquest and annexation of the Province 
of Ulster by such peerless Paladins as John de 
Courci, and his brother in law as well as in arms, 
Almeric Tristram St. Lawrence. '' That vile " 
saltpetre and murderous muskets began to displace 
chain armour and cloth-yard shafts, and the power 
of the Crown to assert itself over the shattered 
ranks of the great feudatories whom the Wars of 
the Roses had decimated and depleted. Of strong 
will and earnest resolution, the Tudor Sovereigns 
governed as well as ruled, and admitted no viaires 
de palais to share their sceptres and undermine 
their authority. For the most part they had a full 
share of business capacity, and preferred efficient 
commoners, or middle-class men, who knew their 
work, and had shown a faculty of organisation and 
administration, to the proudest of peers ; and if 
the spirit of parsimony, carried to the verge of 
meanness, had not been the conspicuous charac- 
teristic of the Tudor tenants of the throne, the com- 
plete conquest of Ireland, and its reclamation from 

E 2 




62 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

the tyranny of its chiefs, Anglo-Irish and native, 
would probably have been effected by the vigorous 
and faithful lieutenants who occupied the Castle, 
and wielded the symbol of power — the Sword of 
State. But the want of pence, which has vexed 
public men (as well as private), more or less, in 
all ages, completely paralysed the arms of such 
deputies as St. Leger and Sidney, who, in addition 
to Viceregal duties, had to become defenders of 
that faith which the great offender of the Faith 
of Christendom — Henry VIII. — had substituted 
for the ancient creeds and forms of ritual ; to 
act as Leaders of the Parliament, Commanders- 
in-Chief and Commissary-Generals, Treasurers, 
Presidents of the Council, and Inspectors of the 
Provinces with quarters in more than half-a-dozen 
Posts and Garrisons ; while, through their spies 
and instruments, they had to keep an unremitting 
surveillance over traitorous chiefs and rebellious 
vassals, who were in constant correspondence with 
the enemies of England abroad, and never lost an 
opportunity of conspiring against her peace and 
welfare ! The Tudors were well served by their 
Lieutenants, but the latter had few to second 
them ; for the subordinate officers in Church and 
State were, with rare exceptions, of the worst 



DUBLIN CASTLE, 



63 



I 



type — ignorant, incompetent, and very often dis- 
honest and disloyal. 

The batde of Bosworth, won after two hours' 
hard fighting, hurled Richard III. — so cruelly 
caricatured by Shakespeare— from the throne of 
England, to be replaced by the victor, Henry VII. 
The Wars of the Roses were thus practically ended, 
and though the Anglo-Irish nobility had not 
suffered to the same extent as that of England, 
it had lost several gallant representatives, more 
especially the House of Butler (Botiler). or 
Ormonde, who were Lancastrians, while their 
great rivals, the Geraldines, of Leinster and 
Munster, were staunch Yorkists. The Pretender 
Lambert Symnel found a strong following in 
Ireland, who were aided by Margaret, Duchess of 
Burgundy ; but the battle of Stoke, a Ron§evaIles 
to Irish chivalry, disposed of the question finally. 
Jasper of Hatfield, Duke of Bedford, was 
Richard's Viceroy. After the accession of Henry 
and the battle of Stoke, Sir Richard Mount 
Edgcombe was sent as Commissioner to Ireland 
to grant an amnesty to the conspirators, including 
the Deputy Kildare, who was confirmed in his 
office. Perkin Warbeck now appears as a second 
Pretender, and gained adherents in Ireland; but 
Is influence was transient, and Henry nominated 



64 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

his youthful son Henry (afterwards the Eighth) to 
be Viceroy, with Sir Edward Poynings for Deputy. 
His mucn quoted Act, which placed the Parlia- 
ment of Ireland under the control of the King ojf 
England, his Council and Viceroy, was the death 
blow to nascent Irish liberty (and license) ; more- 
over, it made English law of force in Ireland, and 
had memorable consequences. The Battle of 
Knockdoe, fought in 1504, between Kildare and 
the Lords of the Pale, against de Burgh and his 
Irish allies, in which the latter were signally 
defeated, was the last great event in this reign. 

At the close of the reign of the 7th Henry, 
the real English Raj was contracted within the 
narrow limits of the four semi-obedient counties, 
Meath, Louth, Dublin, and Kildare. The Kings 
of England still styled themselves ** Earls of 
Ulster," a title derived from the de Burgh 
alliance ; but instead of gaining any revenue from 
that now fertile and rich province, they were put 
to considerable expense by the maintenance of 
garrisons and outposts there, and the insane 
policy of not recognising the facts of the case, and 
contemporary circumstances, still obtained in the 
Royal Councils. The statutes of Kilkenny were 
still renewed in spirit if not in letter. By these 
statutes a gulf was established on parchment 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 65 

between the ruling race of Englishmen and the 
allied inferior race of Irish-born men, on whom 
the brand of Cain was stamped, if they did not 
comply with the sumptuary and capillary ukases 
emanating from Dublin, that proscribed Irish 
customs and clothes, and made the ordinary mode 
of Irish equitation (i.e., without stirrups, a custom 
William of Orange is depicted as having adopted 
in his statue in Dublin) absolutely penal — but ^uts 
custodiet ipsos custodes ? At this time marriage was 
not honourable in all, for polygamy was more the 
rule than the exception among many of the 
dynasts and their followers. It was a case of 
Utah, without the clever commercial code of 
Brigham Young, who made Utah an earthly 
paradise. Peculation prevailed in official circles. 
Diogenes might have been puzzled, even with the 
brightest of lanthorns, to discover the honest man 
of the community, while the three great leaders of 
men and manners, the representatives of the 
Kildare, Desmond, and Ormonde families, were 
mostly steeped in Irish vice and prejudices, and 
were largely allied with Irish families. A hand- 
full of strong Saxons and Celts have held an 
Indian Empire against external foes, and internal 
rebellion, but these Celts and Saxons had never 
degenerated or become Orientals in mind or body 



66 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

like the Roman legionaries of Consul Crassus or 
the Anglo-Normans ; and, as a rule, their authority 
was strengthened by the exercise and display of 
the chief cardinal virtues. In Ireland it was 
wholly different. ** The natives '* became strong 
as the invaders grew weak, and when Celtic 
acumen became allied to the superior learning and 
civilisation introduced by the conquerors, it had 
not much trouble in practically casting off the 
foreign yoke and emancipating itself from a tyranny 
that almost denied it the heritage of a common 
humanity, treating the ** Irish enemy" as Helots 
or perioikoy. 

It would be impossible in this abstract or brief 
chronicle to follow the windings and intricacies of 
Irish politics and polemics minutely. As a sample, 
however, of the lawlessness of the men who 
administered the King's Government in this law- 
less land we may cite the case of the Earl of 
Kildare, who, when summoned to England to 
account to the King and Council for his eccen- 
tricities of conduct, more especially in the matter 
of burning the Cathedral of Cashel, whose Arch- 
bishop was a Butler partisan, at once acknowledged 
the sacrilege, but added the justificatory plea, ** By 
Jesus, I would never have done it had it not been 
told me that the Archbishop was within." So 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 67 

much for burning zeal ! When told to select a 
" counsel " to defend himself, his answer was, that 
he would select His Majesty, "as he saw no 
better man in England." When Payne, Bishop 
of Meath, averred that ** all Ireland could not rule 
this Earl," Henry, who seems to have been 
fascinated by this man of ready hand and ready 
reply, declared that **this Earl shall rule all 
Ireland.'* A warrant is extant, in which Henry 
directs the Keeper of his Great Wardrobe to 
deliver for the use of Gerald, the son and heir of 
the King s cousin, the Earl of Kildare, ** 8 yards 
of black velvet for a robe, furred with white lambs* 
wool ; 2\ yards of a tawney medley for a gown, 
lined with white lambs* wool ; 2 doublets, one of 
black velvet and the other of tawney satin ; 

2 pair of tawney hose, and another pair of crimson ; 
a hat and two bonnets, one of crimson and the 
other black ; 2 yards of silk ribbon for girdles, and 

3 dozen of silk point.** 

This well-dressed young Geraldine married 
Elizabeth, daughter of John, Lord Zouch of 
Codnor, and returned with his father to Ireland in 
1503. Like many more well-dressed dandies in 
our insular story, this Gerald fought gallantly with 
his father and Lord Howth at Cnoc-Tuagh, or 
Knockdoe, against the de Burgh levies. Curiously 



68 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

enough, in the whirligig of time, Lord St. Law- 
rence, now Earl of Howth and Knight of St. 
Patrick, a nephew of the Lord Clanricarde of the 
day, represented the borough of Galway for 
several years, and instituted annual races not very 
far from this sanguinary spot. It is also somewhat 
of an historical curiosity that the St. Lawrence 
family, founded by the Conquistador Almeric Tris- 
tram, never once swerved in its loyalty to the 
Crown — " among the faithless, faithful only they ; " 
for the far greater and more historic house of 
Ormonde — another pillar of the State — produced, 
among a cloud of loyal leaders and splendid 
soldier-statesmen, a few defaulters and waverers. 
Both families, too, amidst the seismic shocks of 
civil discord, and the clashings of civil and religious 
warfare, have preserved their ancestral lands and 
homesteads, keeps, and castles. We read that 
the miserly and mean Henry VH. was so 
taken with the straightness and loyalty of the 
Lord Howth of his day that he made him a 
present of 300/., chiefly, perhaps, for his suspicion 
of the spuriousness of Symnel, ** the Pretender." 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 69 



CHAPTER III. 

" Oh hapless nation ! hapless land 
Oh heap of uncementing sand." 

Henry VHI. was proclaimed king in 1509, 
Kildare remaining his Viceroy, and when the 
latter was killed by the bullet of an O'More, 
near Kilkea Castle, his own residence (the castle 
is still inhabited by the Leinster family), his son 
Gerald succeeded him in an office, the chief pay- 
ment of which depended on the lands recovered 
from rebels — a style of salary that suggested 
action and vigour if not strict justice or impar- 
tiality. Meanwhile, Thomas, the seventh Earl of 
Ormonde, died, leaving an immense fortune in 
money and manors to two daughters, to one of 
whom Sir William Boleyn was married, while 
Sir James St. Leger claimed the other. To Sir 
William Boleyn the king granted the Ormonde 
title of Earl of Wiltshire. Sir Piers Butler was 
heir apparent to that of Ormonde as well as to 
the Irish settled estates. He was ultimately 
forced to accept that of Ossory, Ormonde being 



70 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

added to the honours of the Boleyns, whose court 
star was greatly in the ascendant. At last, or 
perhaps after marriage, Henry awoke to the 
folly of entrusting the government of Ireland to 
Kildare, and it was handed over to Thomas, Earl 
of Surrey, of Flodden fame. This soldier-states- 
man swept the country, but he had no means of 
holding his conquests, and at his own request was 
relieved of office in 1521 to the universal regret 
of *' the Pale." Sir Piers Butler was then named 
Deputy. The Ormonde family had the misfortune 
of being more scrupulous than the Geraldines, 

and their estates were sandwiched' between those 
of the Desmonds and Kildares — a prey to both. 
After a year or two of Butler rule, Kildare was 
once more restored to office, and the war between 
Butlers and Geraldines broke out anew and d 
outrance. Kildare and Sir Piers were, in conse- 
quence, both summoned to London, and the 
former was sent to the Tower, Lord Delvin 
being appointed Vice- Deputy. He was, however, 
presently captured by O'Connor Faly, and held 
to ransom. In 1529 Henry appointed his son, 
the Duke of Richmond, Viceroy, with Sir William 
Skeffington as Deputy. Kildare, on his release 
from the Tower, superseded Skeffington, but 
public opinion was against the selection, and 



DUBLIN CASTLE, 7 1 

Kildare was again summoned to England and 
committed to the Tower, where he died, and 
" Silken " Thomas, his son, broke out into overt 
rebellion, one of the first acts of his followers 
being the murder of Archbishop Alen. In such 
a plight was Dublin that the Castle was plundered 
by the O'Tooles, prior to its siege by ** Silken " 
Thomas. Meanwhile, Skeffington was sent over 
from England with troops. The Castle siege 
was raised. Maynooth was taken, and in a few 
weeks Kildare was forced to surrender, to be sent 
to the Tower. 

In Munster Desmond was negotiating with 
the Emperor Charles V., whom he acknowledged 
as his Sovereign. At his death the succession 
was disputed, but an English force was well 
received all through the south. Skefifington was 
again invested with the Viceregal power, with 
Lord Leonard Grey as Marshal. On the former s 
death the latter became Deputy, and a Parliament 
was held in 1536. The Act of Royal Supremacy 
in church matters, and that forfeiting the estates 
of absentee landlords to the Crown, were its chief 
performances. 

Coyne and Livery having been discounte- 
nanced and vetoed, money payments to the troops 
became absolutely necessary ; but money was not 



72 PUBLIN CASTLE. 

forthcoming, and the troops mutinied in Dublin. 
However, Lord Leonard Grey adopted palliative 
measures, and led his victorious little army 
through the south and north-west, but sustained 
a check in " Faly." Having seized on the Earl 
of Kildare*s five brethren somewhat treacherously, 
he sent them off to the Tower, whence they were 
taken to Tyburn and executed, together with 
" Silken " Thomas. The family, however, were 
not extinct in the male line, for Gerald, after a 
series of adventures, found his way to the court 
and camp of Cosmo de Medici in Milan, and 
Lady Kildare (a sister of Lord Leonard Grey's) 
brought up the second boy at Beaumanoir, in 
Leicestershire. 

Lord Leonard Grey's government of Ireland 
was, if nothing else, energetic and vigorous ; his 
raids and " hostings " were short, sharp, and 
successful, but led to no permanent results. He 
was accused of a very decided leaning to the 
Geraldine faction, through his marriage, to the 
injury of the Butlers ; and soon after his recall to 
London he was executed. In 1540 James Fitz- 
maurice, Earl of Desmond, was murdered, and was 
succeeded by James Fitzjohn. Cromwell, the 
famous Minister, next fell into disfavour, and was 
executed, and Sir Anthony St. Leger was made 



PUBLIN CASTLE. 73 

Deputy In 1541. One of his first acts was to 
conciliate Tirlogh O'Toole, and to send him to 
London, where he was well received by Henry, 
who granted him Powerscourt. From this time 
the O'Tooles cease to be a chief factor in the 
politics of the Pale. Desmond and MacWilliam 
also made their humble submission. In a Parlia- 
ment held in Dublin Henry VHI. was proclaimed 
King of Ireland — a sovereignty hitherto claimed 
by the Pope. This Kingship required a sup- 
porting revenue, and as a condition precedent, 
St. Leger s policy created a general, if temporary, 
peace. O'Neil was made Earl of Tyrone, 
MacWilliam of Clanricarde, and 0*Brien of 
Thomond ; but the pay of the army was still 
sadly in arrear. France and Scotland were 
hostile, and Irish soldiers were required for both 
countries. After a short absence in England 
St. Leger returned to Ireland as Deputy, but he 
took offence at the growing power of Ormonde, 
who, after a short campaign in Scotland, went to 
London to confront St. Leger. Here he was 
poisoned, and St. Leger returned to Ireland as 
Deputy. 

It may be a matter of some surprise that the 
compulsory volte face made in ritual and religion 
in Ireland led to such slight excitement and 



74 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

agitation ; the island had been the isle of saints, 
in name, at any rate ; for some centuries it had 
become the isle of sinners, of which not a few 
churchmen were like the unregenerate St. Paul, 
the chief. Contemporary chroniclers have declared 
that the Mendicant Friars alone preached the 
Gospel of the kingdom, and as the petty plunder 
of the religious houses was pretty generally dis- 
tributed, the greedy Gallios of the day readily 
acquiesced in the State arrangement — just as the 
Russells and Cavendishes did in that Godliness 
which to them, at least, was "'great gain '* — while 
ecclesiastics found as little difficulty in conform- 
ing to the religion of ** Rimmon," as Theodore 
Hook did, when asked to sign the Thirty-nine 
Articles at his Oxford matriculation : ** forty, sir, 
if you choose," being, according to the Ana, his 
free-and-easy reply. No one proved a more 
zealous iconoclast than Lord Leonard Grey — Our 
Lady of Trim, who numbered pilgrims by the 
hundred, and St. Patrick's celebrated crozier, 
wherewith, according to popular tradition, he had 
banished the snakes from the island, counting 
among his spolia opima. 

On the death of Henry VHL, Edward VL 
succeeded to the throne, /^r droit de naissance ; 
and St. Leger continued Lord Deputy. In 1547 



DUBLIN CASTLE, 



75 



he was superseded by Sir Edward Bellingham, to 
whom the unwontedly lai^e salary of £2 per 
diem was given. He was a strong and honest 
governor, ever " in harness," and his attention 
was fully occupied by piracy on the coasts, and 
the necessity for almost ubiquitous "hostings." 
Against O'Connor Faly he was signally suc- 
cessful, and riding with a small company from 
Leighlin into Munster he surprised Desmond, 
and carried him off to Dublin, where he taught 
him some lessons in lip loyalty that were not 
forgotten. On his departure from Ireland in 
1549, Sir Francis Bryan, Lady Ormonde's hus- 
band, was made Lord Justice, but ere a year was 
[ over he was poisoned, and Lady Ormonde married 
"the Desmond." Sir Anthony St. Leger was 
I again sent to Ireland, which was honeycombed 
with conspiracies promoted by religious difficul- 
ties and foreign spies- 
Sir James Croft succeeded St. Leger. His 
• attempt to dislodge the Scot settlement at Ralhltn 
I Island proved abortive. St. Leger was recalled 
[in 1552. Meanwhile King Edward's death led 
' to general risings against the English power. 
The revenue of Ireland at this time was about 
^10,000 a year, the cost of government about 
^50,000. The Viceroy's salary £,\,cao a year. 



J 



76 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

The great curse of English Government in 
Ireland has ever been its lamentable lack of con- 
tinuity! It seems, like the faith of some pro- 
fessors denounced by the Apostle, ** driven about 
by every wind of doctrine," and to ** one thing 
constant never." It was so in Henry Vlllth's 
time, who declared that his plan of conciliating 
the Irish was by " sober ways, politic drifts, and 
amiable persuasions of law and reason." His 
success with the O'Toole tribe, who infested the 
spurs of the Dublin and Wicklow Range, and 
swooped down on the environs of Dublin when- 
ever opportunity availed, was most conspicuous 
and signal, and might have been tried on a larger 
scale in the case of the more distant Earls and 
feudatories. His ** plan " bore little fruit, and his 
niggardliness in the matter of means and men 
prevented the spread of loyalty to the Crown, as 
the loyal seemed to fare worse than the rebellious. 
** Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos," was a 
motto of Imperial Government apparently for- 
gotten or ignored. Nevertheless, exhaustion 
was coming on the native chieftains, and the 
O'Mores and O'Connors Paly must have 
seen the prospective period to their gallant 
struggle against huge odds in the absorption of 
their territory into the shires of the King s and 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



7; 



Queen's County ; while Dangan was named 
Philipsiown, and Campa, Maryborough— Offaly, 
Fercal, Ely. Leix, and Ossory becoming mere 
historical names. The circle of fire was pressing 
I the natives all round. 

Mary succeeded her half-brother in 1553, and 
[ St. Leger was Deputy, With true Tudor instinct 
I the new Queen bated not a jot of her Father's 
|-claims to supremacy in things ecclesiastical ; 
I though zealous for the ancient faith and ritual, 
I reversing the recent policy. " Et antiquum 
•■documentum novo cedat ritui," St. Leger de- 
Iscribes himself as a Tantalus condemned to forego 
(the due maintenance of the government from 
I want of means, and at his own request he was 
■Superseded by Sir Thomas Radcliffe, Lord Fitz- 
jwaher, afterwards Earl of Sussex, while Sir 
li'Henry Sidney came with him as Vice-Treasurer, 
with ^25,000 in hand. A raid was made into 
Ulster, and the O'Mores were granted "reser- 
vations," like Red Indians under the American 
r Government When Sussex went on leave, 
Sidney took his place as Lord Justice, but he was 
paralysed for want of pounds and pence. In 
1558 Sussex returned, and a "spirited policy" 
was inaugurated ; for the army had been increased, 
and so had its pay ; and the Deputy's honorarium 



k 



78 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

was raised to ^1,500 a- year. An expedition 
against " the Lord of the Isles " proved a failure. 

Meanwhile, Mary had entrusted a commission 
to Cole, Dean of St. Paul's, to persecute the 
Protestants of Dublin and Ireland, who had 
hitherto been overlooked, perhaps on the de 
minimis principle. The ready wit of his landlady 
at Chester, where "he lay," averted this horror, 
for she substituted a Pack of Cards in the Dean's 
wallet for the Mandate, Ere another could be 
procured Mary had died, and Elizabeth had been 
proclaimed Queen. Sidney, as we have seen, 
was Lord Justice, and his initial difficulty was in 
arranging the O'Neil succession. Shane, the 
Tanist, claiming the Earldom, vice Matthew 
O'Neill, Lord Dungannon, who was decidedly 
illegitimate. Law, usage, and common sense 
seemed on Shane's side as well as the vox populi, 
but his rival was preferred before him by the vox 
pro7-egis — hence much bloodshed. 

Elizabeth insisted on Sussex's reassuming the 
Irish Viceroyalty ; he acquiesced unwillingly, and 
held his first Parliament in 1 560 in Dublin. 
Kilmainham Hospital or Priory having been 
dismantled by a storm, the Viceregal residence 
was retransferred to the Castle, and was occupied 
by Lord Justice Fitzwilliam, who had come over 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



79 



as Treasurer-at-War, in Sussex's temporary- 
absence in England. When the latter returned 
it was as Lord Lieutenant, a title disused since 
the Duke of Richmond's time. 

Shane O'Neil now occupies all the canvas. 
He was a semi-savage, full of lust and lubricity. 
He had some — nay, great — brains, and much 
cunning, few scruples, and intense overweening 
1 pride. To women he proved a sensual savage, 
as cruel as a Kurd, and his clay was habitually 
moistened with wine or usquebaugh to such an 
extent that, to get rid of the fumes, he would 
bury himself in earth up to the chin for hours. 
He certainly had the gift of government, and 
Ulstermen looked upon him as their chief. 
Sussex's first expedition proved abortive, and it 
was agreed that Shane should go to the Queen to 
state his case and claims ; there he was confronted 
by Sussex, but the Queen rather sided with 
Shane, the specious and the stalwart. 

In Sussex's absence Fitzwilliam occupied the 
Castle, while Desmond and Ormonde went to the 
Queen. When the Lord Lieutenant returned to 
Ireland he made raids on O'Neil, which cost 
much treasure, but were barren of results, and, at 
the mediation of Kildare, a peace was made with 
Shane On the retirement of Sussex, Sir 



8o DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Nicholas Arnold, who had been on the Financial 
Commission, took up the Government. Sussex, 
with all his vigour, had been a failure. ** Imperii 
capax, consensu omnium, nisi imperasset." 

The jealousies and incursions of the Desmonds 
and Ormondes led to a pitched battle at Afifane, 
the last great private battle, or faction fight, of tlie 
kind, save one, in Ireland. Desmond was beaten, 
wounded, and captured ; and the Earls were 
ordered to London. Meanwhile, Shane O'Neil 
defeats the Macdonnells, takes Dunluce, and 
reigns supreme in Ulster. Sidney is now urged 
to accept the Viceroyalty, but endeavours to make 
his own terms, in which he partially succeeds. 
He landed in Ireland in 1566, after along deten- 
tion on the borders of Wales, of which he was 
Lord President, and after losing part of his outfit 
by casualties at sea. Shane O^NeiPs pretensions 
were now so overweening, that a winter campaign 
against him became a State necessity. Randolph, 
with a small force, encamped by Londonderry, on 
Lough Foyle, where he was attacked by Shane, 
who was badly beaten, however. Randolph was 
killed (the only man on his side), and the 
Foyle garrison became demoralised from the 
want of a general, and was subsequently broken 
up, owing to the explosion of their powder maga- 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



zine. Meanwhile, Sidney made a tour round 
Ireland, and for the time being brought tt to sub- 
mission ; and Shane O'Neil, after a bloody defeat 
by the O'Donneis, was killed by the Scots in a 
drunken brawl. His death caused a temporary 
lull in the tale of raids, rapines, and rievings. 
Desmond was now in London, and^ro lanlo safe ; 
but a confederacy between Tirlogh Luinach and 
O'Donnel with the Scots mercenaries boded ill 
for peace. In 1557, the Massacre at Mullagh- 
mast, by Cosby and Hartpole, whereby some 
70 O'Mores were murdered, recalls the ghast- 
liness of Glencoe in later times. 

While Sidney was in London, and Fllzwilliam 
administered the government, the country began 
to relapse, and the English garrisons to grow 
weaker from neglect. " The well affected," quuth 
Maltby, "gaped for the Deputy's return;" nor 
were matters mended by the extraordinary decision 
of the Law Courts in favour of Sir Peter Carew's 
claims to vast territories in Munster and Carlow ; 
regardless of the prescription of 170 years against 
them, and the faultiness of his own title, Sir Peter 
was adjudged Idrone. This set the younger 
brother (Edward) of the Earl of Ormonde in open 
reljeilion, as the decision about Idrone affected 
his title to his Castle of Clogrennan, in Cather- 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



lough, or Carlow, and with James Fitzmaurice 
{who had been defeated by Fitzmaurice, Lord of 
Lixnaw) and the Southern Geraldines for aUies, 
the flames of civil war and rapine were rapidly 
rekindled. But the return of Ormonde and Sidney 
to Ireland smoothed matters; the rebel Butlers 
submitted, and James Fitzmaurice was driven to 
the woods and glens of Aherlow, while Colonel 
Humphrey Gilbert brought the Munster malcon- 
tents to their knees. 

The plan of placing Presidents in the Pro- 
vinces, long discussed, now took shape, and Sir 
Edward Fitton was sent to Connaught, with Ralph 
Rokeby for a Chief Justice. In 1570, Sidney's 
Parliament met in Dublin, and passed Acts of 
Attainder against the rebel Butlers, but the Queen 
respited and forgave them. Diocesan schools 
were established, and some Protective Acts were 
passed for Irish produce, to encourage the growth 
of manufactures. Sir John Perrot was named 
President of Munster. 

The materials for a religious war were now 
not wanting, nor adventurers such as Stukeley 
to fan the flame, but though no Foreign Office 
then existed in England, her diplomatic agents, 
such as Walsingham. unravelled and counteracted 
the intrigues on foot, Jame^ Fitzmaurice still 



I 



DUBLIN CASTI.E. 83 

Stirred up strife in desolated Munster, and, after 
some protocols, Perrot agreed to fight him on his 
own terms. The wily Geraldine, however, 
backed out of the engagement. 

The scheme of " Plantation " in Ulster had 
long been entertained ; it was now put or 
attempted to be put in practice by the grant of 
"Ards" in the co. Down to Sir Thomas Smith. 
The plan, however, was a failure from the first, 
and cemented the Ulster chiefs in the face of a 
common peril. The Savage family still own 
most of it as they have for centuries. In Galway 
and Connaiight Sir Edward Fitton fared badly. 
Clanricarde showed his loyalty by a holocaust 
hanging of his son, his brother's son, his cousin 
german's son, one of the captains of his gallow- 
glasses, and 50 followers, but his sons were in open 
rebellion and besieged him. Perrot, however, was 
victorious in the south-west, though impeded by 
the mutiny of his moneyless troops. Fitzwilliam, 
the Deputy, was in sad straits for money, when a 
new project of Plantation in Antrim was started 
by Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford. It led, 
of course, to a counter-combination of Ulster land- 
owners, and failure was inscribed on its banners 
from the start. Meanwhile Desmond was suffered 
to leave London, but managed to escape from 




84 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Dublin, where he had been detained in the Castle ; 
while Perrot having gone to England under 
stress of ill health, the south and west threatened 
to rise, for the Geraldines ** knew no God, no 
Prince but the Earl, no law but his behests." 
As a sign of recrudescent lawlessness. Sir 
Barnaby Fitz Patrick's wife and daughter were 
carried off by the Graces to Kilkenny and 
Tipperary for ransom ; there was brigandage on 
land — piracy at Sea ! Some of the deeds done at 
this time were a foul blot on the fair fame of 
England and her high officials. It is not disguised 
that Sussex essayed to get Shane O'Neil 
murdered more than once. The Cosby- Hartpole 
massacre of the O'Mores reads like Pelissier's 
smokings and suffocations of Arabs, or the whole- 
sale murders of Red Indians (counted **pison") 
by the Western Pioneers of commerce and ** civi- 
lisation ; " and their infamy is the more conspicuous 
by the contrasting brightness of men like Sir 
John Perrot, who was beloved by the harried poor, 
ever ** entre le marteau et Tenclume '* of native 
chiefs and English rulers, or Cowley, the Governor 
of Philipstown, whose religion was something 
more than a lip litany (he was ancestor of the Iron 
Duke). And now comes the murder by Essex of 
Sir Brian MacPhelim O' Neil, and numbers of his 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 85 

clan and race. In a few months more Essex and 
his troops were no more a menace to Ulster, as 
the latter were disbanded. His last feat was 
taking Rathlin Island from the Scots with the 
aid of Drake and Norris. 

Fitzwilliam's ill health and infirmities of body 
and mind called for a successor, who appeared in 
the perennial Sidney. The Lord Deputy soon 
started for a tour. He found Leinster in a 
wretched state, but Waterford was fairly pros- 
perous, while the Lords Power, or Le Poer, had 
administered Curraghmore to good advantage. 
No pessimist, Sidney found much to admire 
In the MacCarthys of Muskerry. Sir John 
Desmond and his brothers James and Sir Thomas 
Roe waited on him, as did also some "mean 
whites," originally well conditioned, such as the 
Arundels, Roch fords, Barretts, Flemings, Lom- 
bards, Terries, &c. James Fitzmaurice was, 
meantime, active in France. From Thomond 
Sidney went on to Connaught and was well 
received by MacWilliam (Clanricarde), a man of 
ability, though unequal to the control of his 
bastard sons, who overran the country, having 
levelled Athenry, unmindful of the fact that here 
was their mother's tomb. In Connaught five 
English families claiming to be " barons of family " 



J 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



had adopted Irish names and customs, but so 
reduced were they, says the Chronicle, " that they 
have not three hackneys to carry them and their 
train home." In Meath at this time so lax was 
church discipline and doctrine that Sidney be- 
lieved " the very sacrament of baptism had fallen 
into disuse." The see of Meath, we may remark, 
has ever been cathedral less. 

Sir William Sidney, whose son Philip appears 
on the scene for the first time now, appointed Sir 
William Drury President of Munster, who began 
an active career. The death of Sir Peter Carew, 
an Elizabethan magnate, occurs about this time, 
and soon afterwards Essex, who had recovered his 
favour with the Queen by a visit to Whitehall, died 
of dysentery. Hardly a very great man, certainly 
not a very successful one, but a great man 
matigui:, and " nothing in his life became him Hke 
the leaving," Sidney now devoted himself to 
finance and revenue, and met his greatest oppo- 
sition from the sturdy Palemen, with whom he had 
to compromise, but "the Army" was placed on 
a rather better pay footing. 

Gerard the Lord Chancellor now becomes a 
prominent figure, while Maltby in Connaught 
ravaged the property of two Clanricardcs, though 
he failed to secure their persons, while Rory Oge 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



87 



O'More, who seemed to flit about like an aurora 
borealis, ravaged Leinsler and burnt Naas, the 
capital of Kildare. In 1558 he was killed by the 
Fitzpatricks. Sidney's term was drawing to a 
close ; his government was expensive, and the 
Queen objected to expense. Gerard succeeded 
him. No brighter name in the roll of Viceroys 
is to be found than Sidney's. In those days the 
Lords Deputies did not receive ^^5,000 for outfit, 
as now. Sidney's, valued at ^1,500, was lostin 
crossing the channel, besides which his losses 
while in office were estimated at ^9,000 ; and so 
"casually " did Britannia rule the waves of the 
Channel then, that he had to run the gauntlet of 
pirates in crossing- it. 

We have seen how the Lords Deputy were 
expected to further the cause of the Reformed 
faith ; that that faith did not spread and increase 
among the people cannot be a matter of surprise, 
when we find that the new ritual was nowhere 
printed or read in Irish, and Irish was then the 
vernacular tongue, whereas the English was not, 
save in a small area. Even the Earl of Clanri- 
carde conversed with Sidney in Latin, being 
probably more at home in that tongue than in 
that of the Saxon. But that a good deal of the 
morality of the Vicar of Bray was abroad is 



DUBLIN CASTLE, 



shown by the somewhat pregnant fact that the 
mitred Meiler Magrath was at one and the same 
time Protestant Archbishop of Cashel and Papal 
Bishop of Down and Connor, a supremacy in 
mony not often reached. It is recorded that 
the greater part of the Chapter of Armagh, the 
primatial seat, were " temporal men and Shane 
CNeil's horsemen." The Jesuit David Wolfe 
was the most diligent workman in the Pope's 
vineyard. Another sign of the versatility and 
adaptability of the parsons may be seen in the 
manner in which, after that the ecclesiastical law 
or its expounders of the time being had declared 
that marriage might be dignified in all laymen, but 
not in the priest, these clerics confided their caras 
sposas to the fiduciary care of friends, receiving 
them back generally a plus rather than a minus 
quantity (" love's usury," as styled by the wits of 
the day), once the celibate tyranny was overpast. 
I should also have mentioned that another purpose 
of the Castle was to serve as a quasi Temple Bar 
for a frame for rebel heads which the English 
then prf:ferred entire, while the Indian braves were 
satisfied with scalps ; it was also a place of torment, 
though it was for some time, at any rate, unpro- 
vided with the fashionable instruments of torture 
such as the rack, thumb-screw, or boot, as we read 



■DUBI.IN CASTLE. 



89 



that the only means of questioning a recusant was 
by toasting his toes before the fire, which was 

I actually done in the case of an ecclesiastical 
" suspect." 

" E pur si muove " was the muttering of 
Gallileo when the Pope and his Council, who 
arrogating infallibility in things celestial, showed 
their utter fallibility in the diagnosis they made 
of the planetary system. Ireland, too, moved, 
though slowly and hardly perceptibly, under the 

[ sway of the Elizabethan rulers. We read that 
juries could be got to condemn malefactors in 
some few towns, however obstinate and contuma- 

r cious they might prove, in the case of certain 

I families who were almost sacrosanct and supra 
iegem. It is true that the land in the track of 
raids and hostings was as bare and desolate as 

I Germany after the requisitions of Tilly and 
Wallenstein, but wherever the war chariots had 
not passed there seemed to be peace and plenty, 
and good store of corn, milk and butter, and if the 

,' conquest of Ireland and its reduction seems a slow 
process to us in the 19th century, it must be 
recollected that the means entrusted to the 
Deputies were generally wholly inadequate to the 

f end proposed, while those who have read about 

I the Maroon War in Jamaica, where a handful of 



90 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



refugee slaves or their descendants, aided 1 
jungle and rough country, mocked the might 
England for a long time, till dogs effected what 
man could not, will understand the situation. 

It should not be forgotten that the best of the 
English officers acknowledged that only first-rate 
men were of any avail in Ireland, whereas the 
rank and file sent were very inefficient, and con- 
ceit and ignorance are often found in close 
combination! Wherever the Irish "enemy" 
picked up its education it was not deficient, some 
of the chiefs being bi-lingual, some tri-iingual, 
and perhaps they could write Latin in many cases 
nearly as well as a public schoolboy of modern days. 
All authorities bear witness to the fertile beauty 
of many parts of the island, which Body styles 
" an earthly paradise," a combination of mountain 
and mere, rich woods and prairie-like pastures. 

Insularity of position often tends to insularity 
of mind, and both English and Irish were very 
insulated ; but in addition to narrowness of mind, 
the English were painfully Procrustean in their 
methods, and would insist on moulding the Irish 
at once into their own ways and customs, dress and 
deportment — hence hatred and recurrent rebellion. 
But the few larger minded Englishmen, who 
added observation to experience and were not 




DUBLIN CASTLE. 9 1 

enslaved by prejudice, insisted that the natives 
had the makings in them of good farmers, as well 
as first-rate soldiers, and that their power of lying 
was not, on the whole, much superior to that of 
other peoples; but the men who said these 
things were the wiser of their party and people, 
and the voices of the wise have too often been 
condemned ** clamare in eremo." It is curious to 
trace how often history repeats itself. The 
tenure of land then, as now, was the teterrijrtu 
catisa belli. The same impatience of taxation was 
to be seen in the denizens of the Pale, who 
resisted "cessing," while the detestation of 
** landgrabbing " was evinced by the odium against 
those who occupied confiscated estates. 

The conquest of Ireland during the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth was infinitely more important to 
England, and more effective, than the annexation 
of the island by the Anglo-Norman adventurers 
in the reign of Henry II. The latter was writ 
in water, the former in blood, and to the former 
we owe the possibility of the real incorporation of 
Ireland into the Empire. Great minds illustrated 
this long reign. The world acknowledges but 
one Shakespeare, and in the galaxy of great men 
who lent splendour and power to the Court were 
Burghley, Walsingham, the Sidneys, Drake, 



92 DUBLIN CASTLE, 

Hawkins, Raleigh, Gilbert, and scores more, too 
numerous to mention, many of whom were 
interested in Irish affairs, like Sir Walter Raleigh ; 
but English and European politics engrossed the 
major part of the attention of statesmen, and 
Ireland was comparatively neglected in the daily 
administration. She was placed ** en parergou," as 
the Greek historian styles it. The few soldiers 
in garrison were half starved and in such constant 
arrears of pay that they had to pawn their arms 
to maintain themselves, but whenever they were 
effectively led they did wonders. 

If this reign taught nothing else, it ought to 
have stamped one lesson deep on the minds of all 
English statesmen, namely, that Ireland is the 
vulnerable point in England's mail — the heel of 
Achilles that can be easily pierced — and that no 
nation, or chain, or fortification, can be stronger 
than its weakest point. 

At the commencement of the reign of the 
Tudors, the English were almost cooped up within 
their Pale, to which their real realm was con- 
tracted. At its close they were the actual rulers of 
Ireland, powerful against all external combina- 
tions, though liable to disintegration from within. 
Nearly the whole area of the island was now shire 
land, with sheriffs and English Courts of Law. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 93 



CHAPTER IV. 

" Let Erin remember the days of old 
E'er her faithless sons betrayed her, 
When Malachy wore the collar of gold 
Which he won from the proud invader." 

That time must have been very different to the present, for 
the faithless sons have long abounded. — O'Connor. 

In July, 1579, the result of the plottings of 
James Fitzmaurice and others was seen in the 
landing at Smerwick of a Spanish force. Their 
first exploit was the murder of two English 
officers — Henry Darvell, and Carter, the Marshal 
of Munster. Sir Nicholas Maltby attacked the 
Desmonds, who had risen en masse. Fitzmaurice 
was killed, his adherents routed! Sir William 
Drury, on the other hand, was badly beaten in the 
wood between Mallow and Limerick. He died 
soon after this in Cork. Lord Ormonde was now 
sent over from London as Governor of Munster, 
while Sir William Pelham and Sir Henry Wallop 

G 2 



94 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

co-operated with him. In the month of March, 
Sir W. Pelham and Ormonde marched in two 
columns to attack the invaders in their Castle of 
Carrigafoyle, which they took by assault, and 
killed the garrison. Meanwhile, Lord Grey de 
Wilton came over as deputy to Dublin, and to 
signalise his advent attacked the rebel O'Byrnes 
in Glenmalure, but with terribly disastrous results. 
Another party of Spaniards and Italians occupied 
Smerwick and fortified themselves. They, too, 
had to surrender, and were massacred (while the 
officers were reserved for ransom) — 600 in all. 
Strong stern measures • were now necessary, and 
a conspiracy to seize the Castle and liberate 
Kildare and Delvin, hatched in the Pale, was 
punished on the scaffold, and Kildare was sent on 
to London. The end of the Desmond conspiracy 
was approaching; for the Earl, left with but 
a few followers, who were plucked off like the 
leaves of an artichoke, was presently betrayed 
and killed, and his head sent to moulder on 
London bridge. Hurley, sent over by the Pope 
to occupy the see of Cashel, was caught and 
extra-judicially hanged, and on the retirement of 
Lord Grey, Sir John Perrot resumed the Sword 
of State. His first act was to cause the word 
**churle" to be suppressed in favour of franklin, 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



95 



yeoman, or husbandman ; he fell under royal 
suspicion and died in the Tower. 

The condition of Southern Ireland for some 
time after the crushing of the Desmonds was even 
worse than in the potato famine of 1847-48, 
according to the testimony of such witnesses as 
Edmund Spenser! Cannibalism is said to have 
lai^ely prevailed, and if this seems incredible it 
may be replied that the ci-devant cannibal, by 
force of circumstances, was not wholly unknown 
in the best English society even during the 
present generation. Two acts of attainder were 
passed, and arrangements were made for the 
partition of the Desmond's inheritance, nearly a 
million of statute acres! Sir John Perrot was 
ordered to repair to London, where the gallant 
officer died in the Tower, and was succeeded by 
Sir William Fitzwilliam, a grasping rather than 
a gracious governor. He was followed by Sir 
William Russell in 1594, and the executive soon 
became embroiled with Hugh O'Neil (Tyrone) 
and Red Hugh O'Donnel, with whom sided 
nearly all the aggrieved natives in Ireland, till, 
so powerful grew the Celtic coalition, that the 
Queen sent over Essex with 20,000 foot and 
1,300 horse to crush it ! His career was calami- 
tous, and Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, super- 



J 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



seded him, forcing the Spaniards, who had fortified 
Kinsale, to evacuate it, and Tyrone to sue for 
peace. Meanwhile, the cleavage lines of creeds 
and parties were increasing fast, and when Mount- 
joy the meritorious retired to England, as Earl 
of Devonshire, a successor, cast in somewhat 
similar mould, was found in Sir Arthur Chichester 
(1603), who was to carry out King James l.'s 
behests as to the devolution of land on the 
English system. Conscious guilt or fear for the 
future now forced Lords Tyrone and Tyrconnel 
to fly the country— the act was known as "the 
flight of the Earls." This " new departure " left 
the coast clear for the Ulster Plantation, in which 
the land grants were made on a far smaller scale 
than in Munster. However, the letter of the law 
was not carried out, and many natives remained 
on the land as labourers or squatters. 

In the reign of James, first of the ill-starred 
Stuarts in England (the sixth of that name in 
Scotland), the Viceroys were Lord Mountjoy, Sir 
George Carew, Sir Arthur Chichester, Sir Oliver 
St. John (Lord Grandison), and Lord Falkland, 
who retained office during the earlier years of 
Charles l.'s reign, Ireland was prostrate at the 
conquerors' feet, and the division of the spoils by 
Act of Parliament and legal chicane was the most 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



97 



pressing business. The plantation of Ulster, as 
we have seen, was organised on a more frugal 
scale than that of Monster, but the " magnum 
opus " of the plantation " in these unreformed and 
waste countries " was the establishment of the 
Irish Society, which divided the greater part of 
Londonderry into twelve great territorial guilds, 
known as the Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fish- 
mongers, Goldsmiths, Skinners, Merchant Tailors, 
Haberdashers, Salters, Ironmongers, Vintners, 
and Cloth workers. Three of these companies 
have lately sold their lands to their tenants, at 
about half a million sterling, under the Ashbourne 
Act, a proof of the magnitude of the interests 
involved. The confiscated area covered nearly 
four million acres ! In the Parliament convened 
in 1613, obstruction was most prominent, but it 
gave the initiative to the fusion of the King's 
subjects in Ireland, and putting all on a common 
footing with a common charter of rights. In 
Leinster an inquisition into title caused further 
confiscations, and it was proposed to carry out a 
similar system in Connaught. It was at this time 
that the Boyles, Earls of Cork ; Parsonses, Earls 
of Rosse; Loftuses, Marquises of Ely; Wing- 
fields, Lords of Powerscourt, rose to territorial 
and titled greatness. 



J 



9? DUBLIN CASTLE. 

It seems to have been the curse of the Stuart 
mind to fail utterly to perceive the signs of the 
times as their Tudor predecessors had done. In 
1632 Sir Thomas Wentworth took over the office 
and duties of Lord Deputy from Lord Falkland, 
and collaborating with Laud, the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, they raised a storm in England and 
Ireland that cost the King his life and crown, as 
well as forfeited their own lives. James had left 
Charles, his son, an inheritance of debt. Money 
had to be raised, and the landlords of Ireland 
were willing to purchase at the price of ^120,000 
the civil and religious rights to which they were 
de jure entitled. Charles took the first instalment 
of _^4o,ooo, but no "graces" were granted. In 
Ireland Protestantism had crystallised into a sort 
of modified Puritanism, and with the exception of 
official Dublin, and the planters and undertakers, 
the inhabitants were, nearly all, not only Calholic, 
btit Papistical. On these materials Laud and 
Wentworth went to work ; the latter cajoled the 
Parliament out of a large subsidy for the Kin^, 
but granted no corresponding " graces." He 
raised an army in Ireland, increased the revenue 
many fold, and If he discouraged the woollen 
trade, he fostered the linen industry greatly, 
embarking much capital in it. The King made 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 99 

him Lord Lieutenant and Earl of Strafford. His 
palace near Naas — at Jigginstown — was nearly 
completed, but as he was going to take the field 
against the Scots, he found the King had made 
peace, and attainder and death awaited him. On 
the death of Strafford, Sir William Parsons and 
Sir John Borlase became justices, and they had 
but 2,000 troops wherewith to confront a general 
Catholic rising, headed by Rory'O'More and Sir 
Phelim O'Neil. The Castle of Dublin it was 
intended to take by a coup de main, but the 
scheme failed. However, Ulster, excepting a 
few towns, was in the power of the rebels, 
and, instigated by Sir Phelim O'Neil, a bar- 
barous and bloody massacre of planters and 
Protestants ensued. In a few months a few 
forts and towns alone represented English power 
in Ireland. 

The Irish troops were, however, little better 
than a mob till unexpected succour came from 
the continent under Colonel Owen O'Neil and 
Colonel Preston, who soon changed their fighting 
condition. Meantime, Ormonde commanded the 
royalist forces in I reland, and when war was 
proclaimed between the Long Parliament and the 
King, a curious coalition took place between the 
rebels and royalists, a measure which widened the 




DUBLIN CASTLE. 



breach between the King and people in England. 
Ormonde was now made a Marquis and Lord 
Lieutenant, and Kilkenny was the headquarters 
of the rebel-royalist Parliament and council. The 
latter, however, was divided into two factions, of 
which one, led by Rinucini, the Pope's Nuncio, 
insisted on Papal supremacy ; while Ormonde 
and his friends were content with toleration and 
certain restitutions and reforms. Meanwhile 
O'Neil had gained a decided victory at Benburb, 
but the King was in the hands of the Parliament 
— his cause in England lost. However, the 
disunion in the rebel camp led to curious com- 
plications, and Ormonde, who had returned from 
Versailles, joined with Prince Rupert, who had 
sailed with a fleet of sixteen frigates to Kinsale, 
in making a stand, aided by Lords Inchiquin, 
Clanricarde, and Castlehaven. Soon after the 
King's execution, the successes of the royalists in 
Ireland forced the Parliament to counteract them 
by sending over Oliver Cromwell, as Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland, to Dublin with 8,000 foot 
and 4,000 horse. Here he found Ormonde had 
been routed and forced back to Kilkenny. The 
sieges and massacres at Drogheda and Wexford 
were the preludes to Cromwell's triumphant 
progress. Ireton and Coote completed his work. 



DUELIN CASTLE. 



and in 1652 Ireland was subdued and Ormonde 
again in exile. 

Ireton was Cromwell's deputy in Ireland; on 
his death the office passed to Fleetwood ; and in 
1652 a new shuffling of the cards, or the land of 
Ireland, commenced. Transplantation, which had 
before been attempted by sending " rebels " into 
Kerry, was substituted for Plantation, for the 
migration of the magnates into Connaught pre- 
scribed by 1654, was postponed or prolonged for 
a couple of years. The soldiers and subscribers 
to the war loan were paid in land debentures, 
and, according to Sir William Petty, nearly 
five millions and a half acres were confiscated. 
Henry Cromwell, the Protector's son, was now 
Lord Lieutenant, but most of the records of his 
brief reign have perished by fire. Then came 
the Restoration — a re-shuffling of the cards, and 
a quasi-settlement of the land question. Ormonde 
was made a duke, went to Ireland as Lord 
Lieutenant in 1662, but he was soon superseded 
by the more facile Lord Robarts, who again in 
turn made way for Lord Berkeley, a slave of the 
"Cabal" Ministry, Like the restored Bourbons 
Charles IL seemed to have learned little in exile, 
for his policy was a close alliance with France, 
and a restoration of Roman Catholics to power. 



I02 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

This led to the reaction of Titus Oates, and the 
judicial murder of Dr. Plunkett, Lord FingalFs 
brother. Ormonde was again appointed Lord 
Lieutenant, but was recalled on Charles's death, 
and after an interregnum Lord Clarendon was 
named Viceroy, who in turn made way — when 
the pear was ripe — for Dick Talbot, Earl of 
Tyrconnel, with the title of Lord Deputy. 
Catholic ** ascendancy " wa's now universal in 
Ireland, and James landed at Kinsale from 
Versailles, with a French fleet, some men, and 
munitions. A Parliament was held, and proscrip- 
tions made. But the siege of Derry was raised, 
and at Newtown- Butler the Enniskilleners routed 
the Stuarts and their Celts, and Schomberg stood 
boldly at bay at Dundalk. 

William of Orange, who landed at Carrick- 
fergus in June, fought the battle of the Boyne on 
the 1st July, and then occupied Dublin. James 
fled to France, and the sieges of Limerick and 
Athlone were attempted, the latter successfully. 
At Aughrim St. Ruth was killed, and his army 
defeated with considerable slaughter. Limerick 
was now the last hope of the Stuart party. 

De Ginkel made a tremendous attack on 
the town from the Clare shore ; it was re- 
pulsed, but with great slaughter on either side, 



DUBLIN CASTLE. IO3 

and then came overtures for peace, which were 
accepted. 

The articles of the Treaty were only kept in 
part, and the city of the violated treaty has 
become an historical bye-word. 20,000 men of 
the garrison migrated to France to form the 
nucleus of the Irish Brigade; 3,000 joined King 
William. The rebellion was followed by the 
customary confiscations and the cruel Code of 
Penal Laws, inoperative from their mere severity. 
The commercial jealousy and intolerance of 
England was now directed to the ruin of the 
staples of Ireland — wool, provisions, corn — and 
the impoverishment of **the English garrison.*' 
Of course this led to universal smuggling and 
the defeat of iniquitous legislation, whose motto 
was ** Viae victis" all over the world then. 

The Lords Lieutenants during this inglorious 
period were Henry, Viscount Sydney, Lord Capel, 
the Earl of Rochester, James Duke of Ormonde, 
the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Wharton, 
James Duke of Ormonde again, Charles Talbot, 
Duke of Shrewsbury, the Earl of Sunderland, 
Lord Carteret, Lionel Sackville, Duke of Dorset, 
the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of Chesterfield, 
the Earl of Harrington, the Marquis of Harting- 
ton, the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Halifax, 



I04 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Weymouth, 
the Earl of Hertford, the Earl of Bristol, Lord 
Townshend, Lord Harcourt, the Earl of Buck- 
inghamshire, the Earl of Carlisle, the Duke of 
Portland, Earl Temple, the Duke of Rutland, the 
Marquis of Buckingham, the Earl of Westmore- 
land, the Earl of Fitzwilliam, the Earl of Camden, 
the Marquis of Clanricarde. These noblemen 
carried out, as best they might, the policy of the 
Prime Minister of England. They originated 
next to nothing, and their official headstones, with 
very few exceptions, require neither chronicle nor 
inscription. 

Lord Westmoreland succeeded Lord Bucking- 
ham, and his reign bridges over a most interesting 
period, when the Catholics claimed some participa- 
tion in the Constitution and a partial reversal of 
their sentence of outlawry. They were backed 
by Pitt and Dundas in England, by Grattan and 
Langrishe in Ireland, but there was danger 
obviously in offending the " Junto of Jobbers " who 
monopolised political power in that island, while 
there was also peril in denying the just and 
clear claims of the Catholics, who accentuated 
their arguments by arms, and pointed their pro- 
positions by parks of artillery, while France was 
intriguing for their support, and the concessions 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



'05 



to Catholics In England through Mitford's Bill cut 
the ground from under the opponents of relief 
and emancipation. The Relief Bill was passed, 
Fitzgibbon being its ablest opponent, and the 
Session of 1793 was a long and memorable one ; 
but the north was in staunch sympathy with the 
French Revolutionists, and there was a strong 
party of " Irreconcilables " forming among the 
United Irishmen, whose ranks were deserted by 
the Patriciate. The most remarkable circum- 
stance of the time was the non-intervention of 
the Catholic clergy in the politics of the period, 
for Burke writes of them, "Though not wholly 
without influence, they have rather less than any 
cler^ I know." The Viceroy of the period, it is 
evident, though representing his Sovereign, was 
little more than the Secretary of the Prime 
Minister in London. 

From the vast welter of corruption, class 
legislation, favoritism, and oppression, a few great 
great names emerge conspicuously — " rari nantes 
in gurgite vasto." Such were those of Swift, 
Molyneux, and Lucas, who initiated the reaction 
in favour of purity, Roman Catholic restoration 
to citizenship, and Constitutional Government, 
that bore fruit by-and-bye. Meanwhile absen- 
teeism, tithes, middlemen, and agents were driving 



I06 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

the country towards that awful precipice — the wild 
justice of redress by revenge and crime, and 
"Whiteboys," ** Hearts of Steel" boys, and 
"Oak boys'* sprung up to point the protests 
of the poor. Parliamentary Government in Ire- 
land had become a mere mockery. One Parlia- 
ment, for instance, lasted thirty-three years. 
In Lord Townshend's time an Octennial Act 
was passed, but still Parliamentary Government 
meant Government by place and pension. The 
Nemesis came from America, to whose shores 
numbers of the Protestant farmers of Ulster had 
emigrated. Paul Jones was ravaging the coast of 
Ireland. Volunteers started up to defend their 
native shores, English aid not being available. 
Arms now accentuated arguments, and Free 
Trade was conceded to Ireland in 1779. This 
was followed by the emancipation of the Irish 
Parliament from the fetters of Poyning s Act and 
its practical freedom, and the " Nation " granted 
Grattan ;^ 100,000, of which he only accepted half. 
Pitt now became Premier at the age of twenty- 
three, and tried to liberate Irish trade more fully, 
but English opposition proved too strong for him, 
and Catholic disabilities were still unrepealed. 
Naper Tandy and Theobald Wolf Tone now 
appear prominently on the political proscennium. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. I07 

partial Catholic emancipation was granted, and 
some partial reforms made. Further and fuller 
emancipation seemed imminent now. John 
Beresford was dismissed from office, Lord Fitz- 
william was sent over as Lord Lieutenant, but 
George IIL obstinately vetoed all progress in 
this direction. One result was the reappearance 
of the ** United Irishmen.** Meanwhile, Tone 
and Arthur O'Connor had moved Carnot to make 
a descent on Ireland. Hoche had the command, 
but a storm prevented the landing. Duncans 
victory at Camperdown in 1 797 again prevented 
the diversion. General Lake commanded in 
Ulster, Lord Carhampton in chief, and martial 
law was proclaimed. 

We are now nearing the goal of ** '98," which, 
though poets and poetasters may profess to regard 
it with cynical indifference or a light heart, — 

" Who fears to speak of '98^ 
Who blushes at the name ? " 

was a revolting episode of civil and religious war, 
in which atrocities of the most fearful type were 
perpetrated on both sides. Meanwhile Lord 
Camden was the Viceroy of the hour ; Sir Ralph 
Abercromby the Commander of the Army, which 
was in a state of the greatest indiscipline. The 

H 



108 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

latter was superseded presently by General Lake, 
but it was written that a man's foes should be 
those of his own household, and by an expen- 
diture of nearly ;^400,ooo, the Government 
learnt everj'^ move of the conspirators. Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald, unwarned by the fate of his 
ancestor, "Silken Thomas," was in open rebellion. 
He was wounded in the act of arrestation, and 
died from the effects of his hurt. Without com- 
petent leaders, the rebels overpowered some 
scattered garrisons, as at Prosperous, in the Co. 
Kildare, but the Militia regiments soon rallied. 
In the north the rising was very promptly put 
down by Nugent and Barber. In Meath Lord 
Fingall and Colonel Preston routed the rebels at 
Tara Hill, but in Wexford the insurgents took 
possession of the county town, and two columns 
were commanded by those militant Priests, Father 
J. Murphy and Father Philip Roche. The 
barbarous massacre of women and children at 
Scullabogue has been often described and often 
viewed in engravings. With reinforcements, 
however, Enniscorthy and Wexford were soon 
recovered, and *'the rising" stamped out in 
blood. 

Lord Cornwallis now succeeded Lord Cam- 
den, acting as Lord Lieutenant and Commander- 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



109 



in-Chief. His conciliatory policy bore good fruit 
and restored confidence, Hoche at Killala now 
occupies aileniion. Lake's militia at Castlebar 
ran away from the foe, but Cornwallis and Lake 
hemmed him in, and made him surrender at 
Ballinamuck. General Hardl's ship, " the 
Hoche," was taken off Lough Swilley, and in it 
Wolfe Tone ; he cut his throat in prison. 

The necessity of an incorporating union with 
England now commended itself to the mind of 
Pitt and his colleagues, and on the meeting of 
Parliament in Dublin, the Government brought 
in a resolution affirming this view, but after 
a protracted debate of twenty-two hours, had 
but a majority of one. The next time that the 
Bill was brought in it was carried by a larger 
majority of forty-two, the burrough owners having 
been compensated at the rate of ^15,000 for 
each seat in the meantime, and strong arguments 
having been used to convince the recalcitrant. 

The Parliament of Ireland — a nest of cor- 
L ruption, and representing extreme oligarchical 
narrowness — though leavened by some liberality, 
and not without lis share of talent, may be said 
to have suffered the happy despatch to save its 
own life, just as sick cattle are slaughtered 
every day "to save their lives" (for their owners) ; 




no DUBLIN CASTLE. 

it must have been swamped entirely by the 
Roman Cathoh'c electors and members, for the 
right of voting having been granted to the 
Catholics in 1793, membership must have fol- 
lowed, as a necessarj^ corollary, in a year or two. 
That the Government put pressure on the mem- 
bers is quite true, but it was a State necessity, 
and pressure nearly as strong, perhaps even 
stronger, in money bids, was brought to bear on 
the Opposition. Judging by petitions and move- 
ments outside of Parliament, the measure had 
something akin to a plebiscite in its favour, and 
nearly the entire Catholic population. Arrayed 
against this were the representatives of Protestant 
Ascendancy. Much has been written about the 
bribery and corruption by which the Union was 
carried, but there is little or no positive evidence 
adduced in confirmation of these loose assertions, 
and there is much negative evidence on the other 
side. If it was corruption to take money for seats 
in a house that represented nobody but the patron, 
then were the anti-unionists most corrupt. For 
instance, the Marquis of Downshire took ;^5 2,000 
for his seats ! Lord Cornwallis, a man of the 
highest integrity, public and private, wrote, 
** This country could not be saved without 
the Union." Peerages were given with a free 



DUBLIN CASTLE. Ill 

hand, but not nearly so freely as on many other 
occasions. 

Much, we repeat, has been said and written 
about the corruption that carried the Union. 
•Sir Robert Walpole was styled " the Grand 
Corrupter ;" but he was the engineer hoist with 
his own petard, for he was overtrumped, as 
Mr. Glover tells us in his Memoirs. 

** Don Carlos" (Frederick, Prince of Wales) 
" told me that it cost him ;^i 2,000 in corruption, 
particularly among the Tories, to carry the West- 
minster and Chippenham elections in 1742, and 
other points, which compelled Lord Orford, at 
that time Sir Robert Walpole, to quit the House 
of Commons." 

Wraxall tells us how " Roberts avowed without 
reser\'e, that while he remained at the Treasury 
there were a number of members who regularly 
received from him their payment, or stipend, at 
the end of every session, in bank notes. The 
sums, which varied according to the merits, 
ability, and attendance of the respective indi- 
viduals, amounted usually from ;^500 to ;^8oo 
per annum. This largess I distributed, added 
Roberts, in the Court of Requests, on the day 
of the Prorogation of Parliament. I took my 
stand there; and as the gentlemen passed me, 



112 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

in goii^ to, or returning from, the House, I 
conveyed the money in a sqveeze of the hand. 
WTiatever person declined the Ministerial bounty 
in the manner thus related, I entered his name 
in a book» which was preserved in the deepest 
secrecy ; it being never inspected by any human 
being except the King and Mr. Pelham'* 

Other suasions were tried in other cases, as 
we learn from a curious proposal made in the 
House by Lord Nugent, with a view of bringing 
Fox and Pitt together. "He stated that he 
had accomplished, more than 30 years before, a 
similar undertaking, by means of a personal inter- 
view between Lord Granville and Mr. Pelham, 
which took place at his own residence. These 
two candidates for power, said Lord Nugent, 
came to the appointment disguised. I introduced 
them to each other, and then left them alone — 
a good supper and excellent wine, which I had 
provided, soon banished mutual reserve. They 
spoke freely, became friends, and so remained. 
Thus was the Coalition effected in a single night. 
I am not much acquainted with the two gentle- 
men now sitting opposite each other, but if they 
will meet at my house, they shall have a delicate 
supper, with the finest wines. They may even, 
if they please, get gloriously drunk ; and I will 



DUBLIN CASTLE. II3 

answer for it, over the bottle, their punctilios and 
distrust will vanish ; while confidence will spring 
up where difficulties previously existed." 

'H/icts rot Trarepcav fiiy a/x€u/Qyc9 €v\6fi€0* etvau 

At any rate, our bribery and corruption is done 
more discreetly in the few places where it is 
possible to do it at all. 

Once the Union became an accomplished fact 
the separate histor)'^ of Ireland ceased to exist ; the 
greatness of the Empire to which she contributed 
immensely, was her greatness, Imperial disasters 
were also her misfortunes. Henceforward, and 
for nearly nine decades, she has had no separate 
life and no independence ; Ireland being in one 
sense England, and England Ireland. To be 
sure, there were not wanting many among her 
sons who deemed the marriage a miserably 
Mezentian one, and considered that — 

" Freedom's battle once begun, 
Bequeath'd from bleeding sire to son, 
Tho* often lost at last is won," 

and spasmodic, ill-directed efforts have been made 
to burst away from the bondage and thraldom ; 
but these efforts hardly attained even local 



114 DUBUK CASTLE. 

success, and only tended to consolidate the 
Union by shoeing its necessity. Since the 
Union thiit\'-two Lord Lieutenants have ad- 
ministered the affairs of Ireland with varied 
success and unsuccess. Among them were not 
a few able, earnest, and conscientious Governors, 
but their abilit\^ was not equal to their will. 
They were the slaves, or ser\"ants if the term 
be preferred, of a party. ** A vote could mar 
them as a vote had made,** to paraphrase the 
language of a national bard, for their tenure of 
office ^"as dependent on a division, and during 
office their duty was to obser\'^e and report rather 
than inchoate reforms or devise measures of 
amelioration ; while latterly this r6le has been 
almost entirely taken out of their hands by the 
preponderating influence of the Chief Secretar)% 
who represents the DepartmefU of Ireland in the 
House of Commons, where he can gauge popular 
feeling and keep his fingers on the pulse of the 
people, and having his own brief filled in by the 
official and topical knowledge of his permanent 
Under Secretary, who is generally selected for his 
business and official capacity, and may be, as in 
the case of Thomas Drummond and Sir Robert 
Hamilton, a man somewhat Iwrs ligne. 

Thus the constitutional fiction, **le roi regne 



DUBLIN CASTLE. II5 

mais il ne gouverne pas," is extended to Western 
Britain, and the Lord Lieutenant, Prorex, Viceroy, 
or Deputy as he may be, has the smallest possible 
share in moulding the destinies of the country 
over which he presides ; having little left him 
save the task of ** entertaining" (which, to their 
credit, many Viceroys have accomplished in right 
royal fashion) or leading a small section of society 
that makes the Castle its focus, and acting, in fact, 
as the Master of the Ceremonies and " Arbiter 
Elegantiarum " in Ireland, a rdUs which with its 
corresponding corvees, has become so utterly 
anachronistic and half ridiculous that the Prime 
Minister, even with the bait of ;^20,ooo a-year, 
some patronage, and the glamour of a great 
position, finds it hard to procure a Viceroy for 
Ireland, though no chief of the Foreign Office 
has ever, I believe, had the smallest difficulty in 
finding a representative of England at any great 
foreign port. Hence for some time social talents, 
a sounding name, a pleasant presence, a liberal 
hand, and a power of pleasing have been more 
sought for in the selection of Viceroys than 
commanding talents or great gifts of eloquence 
and argumentative power, and it redounds to the 
credit of the Peerage of England, no matter to 
what party they professed allegiance, that noble- 



Il6 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

men have been found to fill the anomalous 
position adequately, and even well, sacrificing, in 
many cases, their own predilections on the altar 
of Patriotism (party patriotism, if you will), and 
making sacrifices of time and money that were 
by no means light ; while, as a rule, the atmos- 
phere of Dublin Castle and Court has been as pure 
as that of the Court of Queen Charlotte, Queen 
Adelaide, or their greater successor, the Empress 
Victoria ! Of Wm. de Windsor we need not speak. 
In the Pre- Union period the chronicler's 
theme was mainlj^ of war — wars external and 
internal ! Since the Union the chief area of con- 
tention has been the House of Commons ; and 
the bitterness of this contention was intensified 
a thousand-fold by the bigoted and obstinate 
defence, by a privileged oligarchy, of monopolies 
in Church and State, which were at once a peril 
to the Empire, and indefensible in themselves. 
The denial of Catholic Emancipation for twenty- 
nine years, partly through the unfortunate mental 
aberration of the Sovereign, raised up an 
O'Connell, who shattered the pretentious fabric, 
and taught the people, whom he led like sheep, 
the power of organisation and constitutional 
agitation. No one now disputes the justness of 
O'ConnelFs claims, or denies the peerless powers 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



117 



I 



I 



of persuasion by which he gained their tardy 
concession. But the arrogant and selfish spirit 
which, under Lord North (a minister who never 
lost his jocosity, though he lost a continent to our 
Empire), had stung the North-American colonists 
into rebellion, widened the breach between the 
citizens of a common country, and left scars 
which are not yet healed. It is true that Ireland, 
though visited by two out of the three divine 
scourges — the Famine and the Pestilence — while 
spared the sword — has made wonderful material 
and intellectual progress during these decades. 
India, which, though, in some measure, won for 
England by Irish brain and bone, was rather a 
Scotch stronghold and close borough, has been 
opened out to Irishmen, where the Lawrences, 
the Goughs, the Bourkes, the Blackwoods, 
Montgomeries, Gillespies, the Fitzmaurices, and 
many others, have won fame and treasure. In 
Parliament the Irish voice has been more po- 
tent than the Irish vote; but the country has 
seen the levies of the Empire led to victory 
* by a Wellesley, a Wolseley, and a Roberts ; 
while the pioneer ship, the " Teutonic," lately 
launched from a Belfast dock, and the Brennan 
torpedo, show that even in ruling the waves Irish 
co-operation is a useful ally to Britannia. Possibly 




Il8 ITOBLIN CASTLE. 

owing to the want of subterranean treasure In 
coal and metals Ireland cannot boast of such a 
port as Cardiff, with her miles of docks and 
affluence of commerce ; but Belfast has sprung 
into commercial greatness within the last fifty 
years, and annihilated by the persevering enter- 
prise of her sturdy sons the niggardliness of 
nature, till the Lagan has grown into something 
like a Celtic Clyde! Is the Union a failure? 
(As is asserted by some of Marriage.) Decidedly 
not! Let those who are still sceptical on this 
point read Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland, and 
judge for themselves. Let them turn over the 
pages of ** Ireland 90 years ago,'* and read the 
record of habitual bloody battles in the streets 
of Dublin, the maiming and mutilation of men 
there in open day, and the insecurity of life and 
property, even in the capital, and then let them 
draw their conclusions. Hundreds, if not thou- 
sands, whose grandfathers were in the humblest 
condition are now affluent and independent in 
Ireland, and if no bloody revolution has effected 
this, " la carriere est ouverte au talent " in this 
island. 

Much is said about the cruelty of coercion — 
always a misfortune — but, for all that, foreigners 
are filled with admiration at the practical freedom 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 1 9 

of the country and its inhabitants ; while it is 
forgotten that the Habeas Corpus Act has been 
suspended in England, while still operative in the 
smaller island, and that Peterloo and Bristol are 
vividly recollected by living men. It is certainly 
a pity that the Victorian eye does not oftener see 
the triumphs and progress of the Victorian age in 
Ireland. 

Little remains to be said about the modern 
history of Ireland that is not referred to in the 
sketches of Viceroys and Secretaries. One of 
the finest passages in our Church Service is the 
text brought into the offertory — ** Not grudg- 
ingly, nor of necessity, for God (and man too) 
loveth a cheerful giver.'' English Kings gave 
their ** graces" grudgingly to Ireland. Par- 
liament seems willing and eager now to repair 
this fault, and ** Justice to Ireland" seems its 
motto ; but the Nemesis of giving grudgingly is 
seen in the success of agitation, and the organised 
resistance of the masses to legal enactments. 
Englishmen in many cases detested O'Connell ; 
now they laud him, and extol the patriotism that 
erected a statue to his memory — 

" A leur dresser une statue 
Pour la gloire du genre humain ! " 

To all political parties the word ** Irish 



120 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

enemy" has ceased to exist, and "Irish friend" 
is substituted for it, and we may see ** laborantes 
in unum Penelopen vitreamque Circen " — say Mr. 
Gladstone and Mr. Balfour. Political triumphs 
are empty things if they do not bring prosperity 
in their train. Ireland has been nauseated with 
politics. She wants prosperity, and Lord George 
Bentinck saw that when he proposed a vote of 
;^ 1 6.000,000 for covering the island witH a net- 
work of railways ; but a far smaller sum than that 
would convert Galway into a ** statio bene fida 
carinis/' with a ship canal to convey the raw 
material to the western ports of England, while 
much of it would probably be worked up in 
Galway where there is ample population and 
cheap labour for factories. An Irish regiment 
of Guards would be a sentimental yet solid con- 
cession. 

There are many simple-minded people in 
England to whom the history of Ireland presents 
little but a series of enigmas. They cannot 
believe that their countrymen could ever have 
been guilty of the most flagrant atrocities, or been 
parties to enormous injustice through a series 
of long years. The high-handed proceedings of 
the Israelites towards the Canaanites are explained 
away to our educated and reverential under- 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



121 



Standings by the fact that the Jews were ordained 
by Providence to be the instruments of a terrible 
retribution on those nations for their breaches of 
written or unwritten laws ; we bow our heads 
in reverence, but we confess our inability to 
fathom the dispensation, and can only re-echo the 
Patriarch's words, " Shall not the Judge of all the 
earth do right ?" When we read Irish histor)' we 
cannot help being struck by some analogies 
between the English and the Irish "nations," and 
the Jews and the pristine occupants of Palestine ; 
the conquerors swept away the natives from the 
fertile grassy valleys, and relegated them to the 
hills, woods, and morasses; building castles and 
forts and strong towns to mai ntain their conquests, 
but consenting to leave a fraction of the sons of 
the soil to act as their hewers of wood and 
drawers of water, their herdsmen and farmers — 
their charter and license for these proceedings 
being an alliance with one of the Kings of Ireland 
and a Bull of the Pope of Rome. The little leaven 
of Irishmen left in these plains and valleys acted 
precisely as the contaminating influence of the 
Canaaniies did in the sacred story ; the Jews had 
been commanded to extirpate the natives root 
and branch ; they disobeyed the precept. The 
Anglo-Normans did the same thing, and in the 



122 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

course of a few generations degenerated from their 
ancient standard, and adopted the manners and 
customs of the Celts. All this seemed an infamy 
to their kinsmen in England, who every now and 
then pulled them up very sharply and made the 
line of demarcation between English and Irish 
wider than ever. Native customs were denounced 
as deadly sins, and even the natural bond of a 
common faith, and a common baptism into one 
church, was powerless to effect any reconciliation 
of races. The Irish "enemy" was to get no 
quarter if he did not conform to the Saxon 
standard, but the Irish enemy was very numerous, 
and **malo assuetus." It began to wax while the 
English element, depleted by intestine feuds, 
foreign service, and a Scottish invasion, waned 
perceptibly. The fine farms which the con- 
querors had seized began to revert to their 
ancient owners, and the descendants of Strong, 
bow were cooped up in a corner, which they had 
some difficulty in defending. The Canaanites 
were more or less triumphant and the chosen 
race was in sore straits, though it still bated little 
of its arrogance and tone of superiority. 

The absurdity of these pretensions to be 
Lords of Ireland, which they were able to ravage 
chronically but not to keep, became patent to the 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 23 

Tudors, of whom the greatest, Queen Elizabeth, 
may be said to have really brought both the 
Anglo- Irish and the Celts themselves to sub- 
mission. This monarch really ruled. She did 
not hearken to the reports of interested subjects 
but had several Irish chieftains over to London, 
and if Her Majesty had had a freer hand the 
subjugation of the island would have been com- 
pleted in her reign, but Her Majesty had foes, 
many abroad and at home, and the Irish question 
was often left in abeyance from want of time and 
means. 

It was not till the reign of James I. that 
citizenship was accorded to the Irish, who for 
nearly five centuries had been the victims of 
anarchy, tempered by tyranny. 

That the analogy of the pretensions of the 
English and those of the Jews is not alto- 
gether fanciful or far-fetched may be seen in 
the admirable memorandum or " discoverie of the 
true causes why Ireland was never entirely sub- 
dued," &c., by Sir John Davis, ** His Majestie's 
Atturney Generall of Ireland," wherein, after 
rehearsing the causes which had made the 
island the land of /r^, he indulges a hope that 
" it will hereafter be as fruitfuU as the land of 
Canaan, the description whereof, in the 8 of 

I 



124 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Deuteronomie, doth in every part agree with 
Ireland." 

It can hardly be imagined that such a thing as 
patriotism existed in Ireland at the time of the 
conquest. Patriotism, such as it is in Ireland, 
means a sort of ignorant abhorrence of England 
and her customs, which for the most part is 
hereditary, but which is kept up to a certain 
extent by what is called religion, and also by the 
rankling of some unredressed wrongs ; but in all 
ages we may be assured that a nation of graziers 
and cattle and horse rearers felt it to be a very 
sore and immediate grievance to be forcibly 
expelled from their ancient and hereditary feeding 
grounds, and relegated to comparatively bare 
tracts, where life for man and beast was hard to 
sustain. Then it was hardly conciliatory to have 
all the laws and ordinances and customs of one's 
race denounced as damnable and demoniacal, while 
the more excellent way was not made accessible. 
Granting that the Brehon law was not a wise or 
edifying code, that it made crime common by the 
facility of expiation, still it was the law of the land, 
and was more or less a terror to evil doers, and a 
praise to them that did well, and pro tanto useful 
till a purer and wiser system was introduced. 
Under the old tribal system every kerne, or 



DUBLIN CASTLE. I 25 

clansman, was a joint tenant with his chief of the 
common stock of land, and shared with the royal 
family the plenty and prosperity of ** the nation," 
whether in war or peace. 

The chief who accepted land under the feudal 
tenure introduced by De Lacy and Strongbow, 
was simply a traitor to his race and " nation," as, 
for his own private aggrandisement, he consented 
to waive the rights of his subjects and followers 
of the sept ; and the title of the Norman Strong- 
bow and other knights to vast tracts of country 
acquired by marriage was purely fictitious, and 
only sustainable by the strong arm — in fact the 
Irish in Ireland were bound by interest and policy 
to extirpate the English invaders if possible — 

" Conjurata tuas rumpere nuptias 
Et regnum Priami vetus.*' 

It is impossible to understand Irish history 
unless these things are taken into full considera- 
tion, but it may be said that the conquest of Ireland 
delivered the natives from a worse tyranny and a 
more unsettled existence. This is hard to confirm, 
and bad as was the ancien regime we may be sure 
it commended itself to the natives — ** A tyrant, 
but our tyrants then were at the least our country- 
men," and so it was probably with the Milesian 

I 2 



126 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Miltiades of the day. To make men outlaws and 
then expect them to behave like law-abiding 
citizens and respecters of pacts and treaties, is 
rather unreasonable ; to condemn men to lead a 
life of squalor in "boolies," and then to blame them 
for the savageness of their habits and customs, is 
somewhat inconsistent, and to expect a crop of 
cardinal virtues when the seed sown is murder, 
theft, and rapine, is a somewhat hyper-sanguine 
hope. 

The land question was then as now the 
primary one, and evictions were as little relished 
in those days as in the present When Shylock 
declared that taking away the means of living was 
much the same thing as taking a life, he stated 
the case of the Irish. Of course the Lord Lieu- 
tenant had to foster the English interest, but to 
the credit of many, be it said, they recognised the 
evils of the system, and gave the natives credit 
for not a few good qualities, cultivated with 
difficulty in such an uncongenial soil and atmos- 
phere! The words of Sir John Davis, an English- 
man, are indeed a signal tribute to the surviving 
sense of justice among the Celtic Canaanites : 
" For there is no nation of people under the 
sunne, that doth love equal and indifferent justice, 
better than the Irish ; or will rest better satisfied 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



127 



with the execution thereof, although it be against 
themselves ; so as they may have the protection 
and benefit of the law, when uppon just cause 
they do desire it." 

Perhaps the following sketch will illustrate to 
a certain extent the fearful condition of Ulster 
even in the comparatively peaceful reign of King 
James I. Sir Cahir O'Doherty had broken out 
into rebellion, and had burnt Derry and mur- 
dered Sir Amias Paulett. O'Neil was expected 
at the head of Spanish troops, and in the mean- 
time the rebels and their chief were lurking about 
the Rock of Kilmacrenan. "The plantation of 
Ulster had not yet taken place, but already many 
Scots had settled themselves along the rich 
alluvial lands that border the Loughs Foyle and 
Swilly, and it was Sir Cahir's most desired end 
and aim to extirpate these intruders, hateful as 
strangers, detestable as heretics. He was the 
Scotsman's curse and scourge. One of these indus- 
trious Scots had settled in the Valley of the 
Lennon ; Rory O'Donnel, the Queen's Earl of 
Tyrconnel had given him part of that fertile 
valley, and he there built his bawn. But Sir 
Cahir, in the midst of night and in Sandy Ram- 
say's absence, attacked his enclosure, drew off his 
cattle, slaughtered his wife and children, and left 



I 





128 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

his pleasant homestead a heap of smoking ruins. 
The Scot, on his return home, saw himself 
bereaved, left desolate in a foreign land, without 
property, kindred, or home, nothing but his true 
gun and dirk. He knew that 500 marks was the 
reward offered by the Lord Deputy for Sir 
Cahir's head. He knew that this outlaw was the 
foe that had quenched the fire on his hearth with 
th^ blood of his wife and little ones, and with a 
head maddened by revenge, with hope resting on 
the promised reward, he retired to the wooded 
hills that run parallel to the hill of Doune. There 
under covert of a rock, his gun resting on the 
withered branch of a stunted oak, he waited day 
by day, with all the patience and expectancy of a 
tiger in its lair. Sir Cahir was a man to be 
marked in a thousand ; he was the loftiest and 
proudest in his bearing of any man in the Pro- 
vince of Ulster. His Spanish hat with the 
heron's plume was too often the terror of his 
enemies, the rallying point of his friends, not to 
bespeak the O'Doherty. Even the high breast- 
work of stone, added to the natural defences of 
the rock, could not hide the chieftain from 
observation. On Holy Thursday, as he rested 
on the eastern face of the rock looking towards 
the Abbey of Kilmacrenan, expecting a venerable 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 29 

friar to come from this favoured foundation of 
ColumbkiU to shrive him and celebrate mass, and 
as he was chatting to his men beside him, the 
Scotsman applied the fire to his levelled match- 
lock, and before the report began to roll its 
echoes through the woods and hills, the ball 
passed through Sir Cahir's forehead, and he lay 
lifeless on the ramparts. His followers were panic 
struck ; they thought that the rising of the Scotch 
and English was upon them, and deserting the 
lifeless body of their leader, they dispersed 
through the mountains. In the meantime the 
Scotsman approached the rock ; he saw his foe 
fall; he saw his followers flee. He soon severed 
the head from the body, and wrapping it in his 
plaid, off" he set in the direction of Dublin. He 
travelled all that day, and at night took shelter 
in a cabin belonging to one Terence Gallagher, 
situated at one of the fords of the River Finno. 
Here Ramsay sought a nights lodging, which 
Irishmen never refuse ; and partaking of an oaten 
cake and some sweet milk, he went to rest with 
Sir Cahir's head under his own as a pillow. The 
Scotsman slept sound, and Terence was up at 
break of day. He saw blood oozing out through 
the plaid that served as his guest's pillow, and 
suspected all was not right; so, shifting the 



130 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

tartan plaid, he saw the head and hair of a man. 
Slowly drawing it out, he recognised the features 
well known to every man in Tyrconnel. They 
were Sir Cahir's. Terence knew as well as any 
man that there was a price set on this very head, 
a price abundant to make his fortune, a price he 
now resolved to try and gain. So off Terence 
started, and the broad Tyrone was almost crossed 
by O'Gallagher before the Scotchman awoke to 
resume his journey. The story is still told with 
triumph through the countrj', how the Irishman, 
without the treason, reaped the reward of Sir 
Cahir's death." The chronicle declares that Sir 
Cahir was killed in battle by Marshal Wingfield. 
1 have given the tale because it illustrates the age. 
It is ghastly enough for a transpontine theatre ; 
but it shows how strong the motives for hereditary 
hatred were, and how legal lawlessness, so to 
speak, could warp and estrange the best impulses 
of human nature. Ramsay, finding his eviction a 
sentence of death to himself, made it one to his 
spoiler. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 131 



CHAPTER V. 



"Plus 9a change plus c'est toujours la m^me chose." 

French Proverb. 



1360. 



So many of the leading organs of public 
opinion — by which periphrasis we mean the daily 
and weekly press of London and the provinces — 
have so lately advocated in their columns the 
experiment of a royal residence in Ireland, and 
its tenure for at least a portion of the year by a 
royal prince at any rate, if not by the Empire's 
heir himself, that it may be well to point out now 
that the Viceregal throne has already had for its 
occupant more than one royal prince, who appar- 
ently wielded the "gladius authoritatis," as the 
sword of State was termed, by no means ineffici- 
ently. King John seems to have been an active 
Lord of Ireland, travelling long distances, and un- 
daunted by difficulties on sea or shore. Henry V. 
was an Irish Viceroy, or Dominus Hibemiae, long 



132 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

before he was King of England. He occupied 
part of Trim Castle in his youth — but there is no 
need to multiply instances to prove an admitted 
historical fact. It is only since the Stuarts came 
to the throne of England that Ireland has lacked 
the rays of royalty, and been forced to accept 
instead the Viceregal sunshine and subdued 
splendour! No people in the world were ever 
so liable to suffer severely from this protracted 
eclipse of royalty, for none are more sensitive to 
slights, or more naturally monarchical by educa- 
tion, faith, and instinct; to none does personal 
presence and prowess more strongly commend 
itself or appeal to national sentiment, and the 
fountains of loyal devotion ; and Irishmen can 
point to history in confirmation of their fidelity to 
their sovereigns, shedding their blood like water 
for Charles I. and James II., whom, like Mary 
Tudor, they held to be their rightful monarch, 
while they recall the pregnant fact that the Queen's 
life was never attempted in Ireland or by Irishmen, 
as it was in England by Englishmen ; and that 
the Irish press, however viciously virulent against 
Viceroys and ministers, never spoke disrespectfully 
of Her Majesty, while she herself was almost as 
warmly welcomed to the shores of Green Erin 
as her uncle George IV. had been. Whether 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 33 

the experiment would prove operative again, after 
the long years of neglect and absence, may be 
problematical, but it might be worth a trial. The 
Prince of Wales carries popularity with him, and 
his Princess is an idol in most parts of Ireland, in 
spite of the misleading of the popular mind ; and 
the mere fact of Irishmen loyally clinging to their 
self-elected chiefs shows how faithful they might 
be to their legitimate authorities, if the latter would 
but appeal in person to their suppressed sentiment ! 
It may be that the burden of the general cry 
would be ** too late, ye come too late ; " but, at 
any rate, it may be no harm here to record the 
happy results of the government of Ireland by the 
Duke of York, who fell in 1449, and whose epitaph, 
written in a French doggrel couplet, ran thus — 

" En Errlande mist tal gouvemement 
Tant le pays vygla paissiblement." 

While a contemporary' poet thus writes of him, 
speaking in prop rid persond — 

•' And maugre him (Somerset) so choyse, lo ! was my chaunce. 

Yea tho' the Quene, that all rulde, took his part, 

I twice bare rule in Normandy and France, 

And Lord Lieutenant in Irelande ; where my hart 

Found remedy for every kind of smart : 

For thro' the love my doings there did breede 

I had their help at all times in my neede.*' 



134 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

This Duke of York was followed by Geraldines 
and Desmonds. The Ormondes adhered to the 
Lancastrian banner. 

Moreover, the Duke of York, who rejoiced 
so greatly in having gained the love and affection 
of his Irish subjects, was married to Lady Rose 
Nevill, daughter of the Earl of Westmoreland, 
who was popularly known as the ** Rose of Raby." 
She seems to have captivated the Irish by her 
beauty, charm, and grace, as we read of Brian 
O* Byrne, chief of his sept in the co. Wicklow, 
in addition to an offering of 400 beeves, giving 
her two " hobbies " for her special use. Now a 
good hobby was often an animal of some value 
then as now ; for we read of MacMurrough's 
having paid 400 cows for his, wherewith he be- 
witched the camp of Richard II. with his noble 
horsemanship and spear- thro wing. The ** Rose 
of Raby " probably contributed considerably to 
the Duke's success in Ireland, if all Moore wrote 
about his countrymen be true. She was the 
mother of Edward IV. and Richard III. The 
historian tells us **that so beloved was this Duke 
of York in Ireland that it was reputed in England 
that the wildest Irishman would, in less than 
twelve months, be sworn English." 

Something like this enthusiasm was shown in 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



'35 



the West of Ireland when H.R.H. the Duke of 
Connaught, who was serving in Ireland with his 
corps, the Rifle Brigade, spent a week or two in 
the CO. Galway, the guest of the late Mr. Burton 
Persse. of Moyode Castle, for men came from 
immense distances merely to get a ghmpse of him 
at a meet of the county hounds. 

In the Lieutenancy of one of the earlier Earls 
of Ormonde, a circumstance occurred which will 
seem so curious to many readers, and at the same 
time illustrates so well the wildness of the wars in 
Ireland and the semi-savagery of the septs, not 
unmixed with much native kindness and courtesy, 
that we give it here in brief. Henry de Crystede 
told it to Sir John Froissart, the chronicler, whom 
he met at Eltham in the palace of Richard II,, 
the conversation originating in his accounting for 
his intimate knowledge of the Irish language! 
Crystede, it seems, was on a " hosting " with the 
Earl of Ormonde, and riding one of his chargers, 
a fast galloper, if a bit of a puller; the Irish 
having been put to flight, the Ormonde party 
pursuing, Crystede's horse ran away with him, 
when, presto! an Irish kerne jumped up behind 
his saddle, and, without attempting to kill him, 
bound his arms, and steered the horse for two 
. hours from his perch on the croup till they came 



136 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

to a town or village called ** Herpelipin," where 
his captor, Brian or Brin Costenec, claimed his 
captive, treating him well, and giving him his 
daughter in marriage ! Two girls were born in 
the course of seven years. Brin Costenec was a 
follower of Art MacMurrough, King of Leinster, 
and in one of the border frays he took Crystede 
with him. Both were taken prisoners by Lionel, 
Duke of Clarence, or his captain, and Brin was 
only ransomed by the surrender of Crystede's 
wife and one child ; the other was retained by 
the grandfather. Crystede and his family subse- 
quently settled near Bristol. His identity was 
established by the recognition of Lord Ormonde's 
old charger. This reads like a page in one of 
Cooper's Indian romances. 

1639. 

The character, career, and the personality of 
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, Baron 
Raby, of Wentworth Wodehouse, stands out so 
conspicuously among minor men and ministers, 
and had such an influence on the destinies of the 
kingdom, that they merit something more than the 
transient notice we have been able to give it in 
summarising the gesta and policy of the Viceroys 
of Ireland. By Royalist writers he is bracketed 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 37 

with his master, Charles I., as a martyr! By 
Whig and Radical writers he is described as the 
foe to freedom and the panderer to privilege and 
prerogative, who expiated an evil career on the 
scaffold ! All sides, however, combine to do 
honour to his great talents and powers of organi- 
sation, wherein, according to the latter category 
of chroniclers, lay his danger to the State and to 
freedom. Certain it is that few princes have ever 
had so able, so devoted, so zealous a servant and 
councillor ; few have ever proved so unworthy of 
such faithful loyalty and love ! Macaulay calls him 
an apostate, never stating how he had been driven 
into the ranks of opposition and " patriotism " 
by gross injustice and persecution. On the death 
of the Duke of Buckingham the ratson d'etre of 
his opposition ceased, and the Court party claimed 
him. He was now a peer and privy councillor, 
and was next made President of the Northern 
Council, where his arbitrary authority soon became 
absolute. Retaining this office he was sent over 
to Ireland as Lord Deputy, and Carte, the 
chronicler, tells us how the Proconsul proceeded 
forthwith to his province, landed at ** Lousie* 
Hill," and rejecting the splendid escort offered 
him by Lord Howth and the other nobles of the 

* Lazar Hill, probably. 



138 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

neighbourhood, walked quietly to the Castle, 
where he took the oaths, &c., &c. In Dublin 
he met an old friend. Miss Rhodes, the veteris 
vestigia flammce were rekindled, and he made 
her his third wife, being almost the only Deputy 
who was married at the Castle, with the exception 
of his successors the Earl of Eglinton and Lord 
Fortescue. Here Lord Strafford initiated the 
social side of Viceregal rule in Dublin with much 
state and splendour. The finances of the island 
were in hopeless confusion when he arrived ; in a 
few years they were comparatively flourishing. 
Piracy was swept from the coasts ; the Church 
was in wretched want of money and morale — 
he re-endowed and made it efficient for good. 
The customs increased nearly four-fold. The 
King had a good standing army of nearly 9,000 
men, and there was a balance of ;^30,ooo to the 
King's credit in the exchequer. All this was 
not done without some despotism and high- 
handedness ; but, while he flouted the great and 
arrogant, he was very good to the poor, and was 
beloved by them. He made hosts of enemies, 
and the King his friend betrayed him. He died 
with dignity and composure. 

According to the Chronicles, Lord Strafford 
found out early that the Irish were not to be 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 39 

governed by lenity, but could only be kept in 
subjection by severity. 

It is worth observing that Lord Strafford 
soared infinitely above the littleness of despising 
anything becatise it was Irish. His own genius 
could appreciate genius wherever it cropped up, 
and as the wits say in Ireland, ** He never 
judged the book by its binding, but by its con- 
tents'' Therefore, we find Turlough Carolan, 
said to be the last of the Irish harpists or 
bards, knew his way to Jigginstown, Strafford's 
castle in Kildare, where he ever found a 
warm welcome, as he has himself recorded in 
a poem, of which the initial stanza runs thus 
(in translation) — 

" When by sickness or sorrow assail'd. 
To the mansion of Strafford I hied, 
His advice and his cordial ne'er fail'd 
To relieve me, nor e'er was denied" 

Carolan could resent rough treatment or in- 
hospitality ; for, like Archilochus, whom ''propria 
rabies armavit iambo^' according to the satirist, 
he denounced one Mr. OTlynn, who had been 
discourteous to him, in a couplet that has survived 
the erosive centuries — 

K 



140 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

** What a pity hell's gates were not kept by OTlynn, 
So surly a dog would let nobody in." 

Probably Strafford encouraged national dances, 
for we read that James II. was much entertained by 
a real Irish figure dance (not a jig), in which each 
partner held the ends of handkerchiefs, showing 
that kerchiefs had come into vogue since the time 
of Grace O'Malley or Gran Uaille, that piratical 
Princess of the West, who appeared at Queen 
Elizabeth's Court with a bad cold and a primi- 
tive fashion of nose-blowing that offended Queen 
Bess's sense of the to irpenov so much that she 
ordered a maid of honour to hand Grace a cam- 
bric kerchief. Grace used it, but threw it 
directly into the fire, and repeated the process 
several times to- the intense amusement of all the 
fine lords and ladies of the Court. 

The feebleness of England on the sea at this 
period is evidenced by the circumstance that 
Strafford was detained in Wales for some time 
by dread of pirates, who actually plundered his 
servants. 

1642. 

The great house of Ormonde may be said to 
have reached its zenith in the person of James, 
Duke of that ilk, who filled the office of Lord 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



141 



Lieutenant for thirteen or fourteen years, some of 
which were so troublous and distracting that 
loyalty to King and country were anything but 
synonymous or convertible terms. He was the 
son of Viscount Thurles, eldest son of Walter, 
eleventh Earl of Ormonde, and of Elizabeth 
Poyntz, daughter of Sir John Poyntz, of Acton, in 
Gloucestershire. Recenter historians and chro- 
nologists than Carte (who wrote many volumes, 
long enough for a life of Methuseleh, about his 
career), made out that he was born in 1607, and 
not in 1610, as stated. Archbishop Abbott looked 
after his early education, but, subsequently to his 
marriage with Lady Elizabeth Preston, the Earl 
applied himself to improve a mind that had been 
left rather fallow. A decided difference with 
Satrap Strafford, who had issued an order that 
swords were not to be worn at his lev^e, which 
Ormonde disobeyed, stating that he was summoned 
to appear " Cinctus gladio," or " per Cincturam 
gladii," led to a warm friendship and co-opera- 
tion in sustaining the Royal prerogative and 
power in Ireland. 

The Irish rebels were obnoxious alike to King 
and Parliament, and from both powers he received 
a commission as Lieut, -General for the purpose of 
stamping out the rebellion, and in the field he was 



142 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

very successful against Colonel Preston. When 
it became evident that Ireland was the focus of 
fidelity to Royalty, Ormonde was sent there by 
the King as Lord Lieutenant, and held office for 
three years, surrendering it to the Parliamentary 
Commissioners, and retiring to France to watch 
events, as he would not go all lengths with 
Rinucini and the rebel party. In 1648 Ormonde 
returned to Ireland, but failed in an effort to sur- 
prise Dublin. He had previously joined Rupert 
at ■ Kinsale and rallied the shattered Royalist 
forces, causing Charles II. to be proclaimed King, 
but the Cromwellian advance was irresistible, and 
Ormonde, owing to his uncompromising Protes- 
tanism, becoming an object of strong suspicion to 
the Irish army, again went to France, only to 
reappear at the restoration and coronation of 
Charles II., when he officiated as Lord High 
Steward. He became subsequently Chancellor 
of Oxford, and was presented with a sum of 
;^30,ooo, but Carte and his contemporary chro- 
niclers calculate that his loyalty cost him no less 
than ;^900,oco from first to last — a large sum in 
those days ; but the Ormonde family was among 
the wealthiest in the Peerage of England ! From 
1667 till 1685 he for the third time filled the 
office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with his 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



son, Lord Arran, for Deputy. In 1688 he died. 
' and was buried in Westminster Abbey, having 

maintained through a long life the famous motto 
» of the De Burghs : — 

" Ung foi, ung loi, ung roi." 

He probably will never be accounted a great 
strategist or even first-class captain ; but the 
greatest general, after all, is the man who com- 
, mits the fewest blunders, and Ormonde steered 
, clear of them for the most part, as well as of 
' the falsehood of extremes." He must ever 
rank among the great Viceroys of Ireland; the 
most conspicuous tenants of the Castle. 

The Ormondes were Princes Palatine of Tip- 
perary. Carte tells us how both the poetaster 
and publisher of a libel on Ormonde were publicly 
d, " pour encourager les autres." 



1649. 

In the "Liber Munerum" we find Oliver 
Cromwell inscribed as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 
in 1649, and his task was to defeat the combina- 
tion of English Royalists and Irish Royalists, and 
•rebels, who refused to acknowledge the supremacy 
of Parliament; like Lord Cornwallis, in a some- 
what similar emergency, he was invested with 



144 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

dictatorial powers, and history has told us how 

effectually he wielded them. In less than a year 

Ireland was subdued, and he was enabled to leave 

it in the hands of Ireton, to prosecute even greater 

enterprises in England and Scotland, which he 

subdued even more completely than Ireland. 

The histor)*^ of Cromwell is the history of the 

greatness and glory of England on land and sea, 

when 

" the wave, 
Sonorous witness to his Empire gave." 

He was certainly the greatest Lord Lieutenant 
that ever set foot in Ireland — perhaps the most 
liberal and tolerant In 1658 we find Henry 
Cromwell installed at the Castle, General Fleet- 
wood having been the Lord Protectors deputy 
during part of the interval, and having bated 
nothing of the pomp and pageantr)' of his pre- 
decessor, Strafford, as we find in a record of his 
official progress from Dublin to Cork, through 
Naas and by Jigginstown. ** Upon their entering 
the town of Carlow the four trumpeters, bare- 
headed, kept sounding, then ten of the men in 
livery, by two and two. The third the High Sheriff, 
the fourth the Governor of the town, with his 
officers, all bare-headed. The Lord Deputy, 
Mr. Corbet (afterwards Chief Baron Miles 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



145 



Corbet), Colonel Tomlinson, the Major-General 
(the Lord Harry Cromwell), and Colonel Sankey, 
were in the coach, and were conducted to the 
Casde, when the Sheriff gave them gallant treat- 
ment." " Three months afterwards," says Mr. 
J. Prendergast, " Henry Cromwell, the Lord 
Harry, the rising sun, was received on a ' pro- 
gress ' to Kilkenny, with even greater pomp!" 
Four miles from the town of Carlow he was met 
by Major Bolton, with Colonel Pretty's regiment, 
and a mile further by Colonel Pretty himself, in 
his civil capacity as SheriiT, with thirty servants 
in rich liveries. In no point did the Cromwells 
omit to keep up the splendour of the Castle 
festivities. Even to the ancient and not very 
Puritanical custom of sending the gentlemen, on 
festival days, down to the Castle cellars to broach 
such casks as they would, and to drink their fill — 
for one. giving the Duke of Ormonde intelligence 
in 1663, at the time of the Protestant plot to 
seize the Castle and restore the Cromwellian 
rule, has the following concerning the Earl of 
Kildare. 

" Lord Kildare carried the sword before 
Henry Cromwell that day Dunkerke was taken, 
and that night he in the cellar drank a confusion 
to the family of the Stuarts." 




146 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

The records of Henry Cromweirs brief reign 
are said to have been consumed by fire ; but there 
is a general concensus that he was a popular 
Prorex. 

One of the curiosities of the history of Ireland 
is, that the memory of Cromwell, the tolerant 
tyrant, is still held in universal execration by the 
Roman Catholics of the land, while the oligarchical 
Parliament that imposed and enforced the Penal 
Code is looked back to with fond (national) 
remembrance as patriotic and racy of the soil. 

1686. 

• 

Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell, may 
claim this signalement — that he was the sole 
representative of the Catholic Creed who filled 
the office of Viceroy, or held its symbol, 
** gladium authoritatis," since the Restoration, 
as Oliver Cromwell and his son Henry were the 
only Independents who ever acted as Lords 
Lieutenants. Since the Revolution of 1688, and 
the Act of Settlement then made, the office has 
only been tenable by a Protestant, though such 
Protestant need not necessarily be an Episcopalian 
or of the churches of England or Ireland, witness 
its tenure by the Earl of Aberdeen. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



147 



James II. had. to paraphrase a common ex- 
pression, "abjured the errors of Protestantism, 
and embraced those of Rome," but he greatly 
miscalculated his own powers of persuasion, or en- 
forcementof the Royal wishes bystrongermeasures, 
as well as the ductility of the English nation, if 
he seriously considered that he could draw them 
like a flock of sheep, as Henry VIII. had done 
in his day. The zeal of convert or pervert is 
generally great, and King James spared no pains 
or energy in his campaign of propagandism, with 
its sequences, penalties, and premiums. The 
faithful were to fill the high places, the recusants 
to be removed. With this view he selected 
Tyrconnell to carry out his royal behests in 
Ireland, where his pliant but still Protestant 
brother-in-law. Lord Clarendon, had displaced 
the Duke of Ormonde in the Lieutenancy, while 
Tyrconnell filled the office of Commander-in- 
Chief, with all the substance of power, of which 
Clarendon retained but the shadow or semblance, 
but even this shadow was obnoxious to Tyr- 
connell, who had the poor protesting Protestant 
removed from his path. 

Something of what Strafford did for Charles I. 
Tyrconnell attempted to do for James, and in a 
few months' lime. Nor is there any historical 




148 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

doubt about his movements or measures, for if 
Macaulay's picture of Dick Talbot be somewhat 
black, Lingard confirms his statements to a great 
extent. 

The colonists, planters, and undertakers now 
learnt practically that there was a reverse side to 
'* Protestant ascendancy," and that Popish ascen- 
dancy, well plied, was a powerful political factor. 
One thousand five hundred families were said to 
have left Ireland in a single week. Tyrconnell was 
a tyrant, and did his spiriting well, and without 
much scruple. The Army was made Catholic — 
the Bench very nearly. Fitton, said to be a 
forger, was made Chancellor ; Tom Nugent, 
Chief Justice of the Queen s Bench ; Nagle was 
Attorney-General ; Keatinge, who filled the 
Common Pleas was, 'tis true, a Protestant, but 
his two assessors were of the Catholic faith ; and 
Spring Rice presided over the Exchequer, the 
Court most used, as from it there was no appeal 
to England. The Corporations were made to 
send in their charters by writs of *' quo warranto," 
and new ones were granted, in which the faithful 
were predominant ; in fact, Church, State, and 
Army were Catholicised, so far as offices and 
employments went. But for all that, victory was 
not on the side of the big battalions, even with 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



149 



French auxiliaries and the countenance of the 
Grand Monarque. French authorities impugned 
Irish valour, but undisciplined levies under 
moderate captains are seldom efficacious, and 
France and Spain had ere long good reason to 
change their tone, when they learnt the stuff the 
Irish Brigade was made of; the same sort of 
soldiers who had erst gained name and fame in 
France, under English leaders, of one of whom 
it is recorded that when a valiant Gaul challenged 
any Englishman to fight him in single combat, an 
Irishman stept forth, swam across the harbour, 
and brought back the champion's head ; and thus 
was a Gallic Goliath overcome by a Celtic Kerne 
— if records can be relied on. 

The events of the campaigns that found their 
close in the capitulation of Limerick need no re- 
capitulation. 

Tyrconnell was, It would seem, no general or 
strategist ; in opposition to Sarsfield, he held 
with Lauzun that Limerick was indefensible. 
We know the gallant stand made there, and its 
results. Tyrconnell, after this, disappears from 
history, from the Viceregal scene at any rate. 
He had the merit of " thoroughness," if few 
others. Macaulay has gibbeted him as an un- 
I paralleled liar, and braggart too, for he throws 



150 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

doubt on the story of the pearl necklace, a sort 
of companion to the more famous diamond neck- 
lace legend of the de Rohan family. It is said 
that, after the Battle of the Boyne, King James 
spurred hard to Dublin Castle with an escort of 
Irish cavalry, whom he outstripped, arriving first 
at the Castle. ** How hard your countrymen 
ride," he remarked to the lovely Lady Tyrconnell, 
who came out to receive him, ** Yes, Sire," was 
the ready reply, " but you seem to have beaten 
them hollow." 

1695- 

The Earldom of Essex gave the Commonwealth 
of England many good representatives in Church 
and State. There was a halo of romance and 
chivalrous devotion to king and country in the 
Devereux family, which, if it did not tend to great 
personal prosperity, raises several of the tenants 
of this title far above ** the common people of the 
Peerage," and identifies them with the histor)^ of 
our Empire which they did their devoir in creating 
and maintaining. When that noble family became 
extinct the title passed to the Capells, of Suffolk 
originally, and next of Hertfordshire, who seem to 
have been masterful people, of strong convictions, 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



'5" 



to which they clung courageously, even to the 
scaffold. Two Capells were Lords Lieutenant of 
Ireland, one from 1672 to 1677, the other was in 
office in 1696. Their reigns were more remark- 
able for domestic or urban improvements than for 
martial exploits or sensational achievements. But 
that even the more peaceable and commercial 
portions of the island had not yet settled down in 
the ways of law and order is proved by the fact 
that in the year 1671 there was a pitched battle in 
the city of Dublin, between the apprentices and 
the authorities, the former having undertaken to 
destroy a wooden bridge not far from the Castle ; 
which, though metamorphosed now into stone, 
still bears the name of " Bloody," in commemora- 
tion of this fray, in which several perished. It 
was in this reign that Essex Gate (Dublin) was 
erected on the site of Izod's tower, and that the 
foundations of Essex bridge, since renamed 
" Grattan bridge," were laid. 

That Lord Essex was very solicitous to advance 
the material interests of his Kingdom is evidenced 
by his request to Sir Richard Temple to make a 
report on the " means and ways he esteemed most 
proper for the advancing of trade in Ireland." 
This report, which is drawn at considerable length, 
shows that Sir Richard Temple had formed a very 



152 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

just estimate of the enormous capability of 
Ireland and its soil if properly developed and 
husbanded. At this moment we can only make 
an extract about his views as to the horse-breed- 
ing capacities of Ireland, because the question of 
cavalry remounts has lately occupied a large share 
of public attention, and that something of a panic 
has been created by the proclamation of a possible 
or probable horse famine^ and also because it 
shows that a statesman and man of letters, as Sir 
Richard Temple proved himself to be (he was 
Swift s patron), can combine literature and art with 
a due appreciation of the value of the noble 
animal, and the place he should occupy in a well 
regulated state. ** Horses in Ireland are a drug," 
he writes, " but might be improved to a com- 
modity, not only by a greater use at home, 
but also fit for exportation into other countries. 
The soil is of a sweet and plentiful grass, which 
will raise a large breed ; and the hills, especially 
near the sea coasts, are hard and rough, and 
so fit to give them shape and breadth and sound 
leet. The present defects in them are breeding 
without choice of stallions, either in shape or size, 
and trusting so far to the gentleness of the 
climate as to winter them abroad, without ever 
handling colts till they are four years old. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



153 



I 



This both checks the growth of the common 
breeds and gives them an incurable shyness, 
which is the general vice of Irish horses, and 
is hardly ever seen in Flanders, because the 
hardship of the winters in those parts forces the 
breeders there to house and handle their colts 
for at least six months every year. In the studs 
i. of persons of quality in Ireland, where care is 
taken and cost is not spared, we see horses 
bred of excellent shape and vigour and size, so 
as to reach great prices at home, and encourage 
strangers to find the market here, among whom 
I met with one this summer that came over 
on that errand, and bought about twenty horses 
to carry over into the French army, from twenty 
to three score pounds price at the first hand. 

"The improvement of horses here may be 
made by a standard prescribed to all stallions, 
and all horses that shall be used for draught ; the 
main point being to make the common breed 
larger, for then, whether they have shape or no, 
they have ever some reasonable price both at 
home and abroad ; and besides being not to be 
raised without wintering, they will help to force 
men into improvement of land by a necessity 
of fodder. But for encouragement of a finer 
breed, and in the better hands, some other 



154 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

institutions may be invented, by which emulation 
may be raised among the breeders by a prospect 
both of particular honour and profit to those who 
succeed best, and of good ordinary gains and 
ready vent to such as by aiming at the best, 
though they fail, yet go beyond the common 
sorts. 

** To this purpose there may be set up both a 
horse-fair, and races to be held at a certain time 
every year for the space of a week ; the first 
in the fairest Green near the city of Dublin, 
the latter in that place designed by your 
Lordship in the Park for some such purpose. 
During this week the Monday, Wednesday, 
and Friday may be the races ; the Tuesday, 
Thursday, and Saturday the fairs may be held. 
At each race may be two plates given by the 
King, one of ;^30, and the other of ;^20 (besides 
the fashion), as the prizes for the first and second 
horses, the first engraven with a horse crowned 
with a crown ; the second with a coronet, and 
under it the day of the month and the year. 
Besides these plates the wagers may be as the 
persons please among themselves, but the horses 
must be evidenced by good testimonies to have 
been bred in Ireland. Furthermore, the Lord 
Lieutenant may even be present himself, or at 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 55 

least name a deputy in his room, and two judges 
of the field, who shall decide all controversies, 
and with sound of the trumpet declare the two 
victors. The masters of these two horses may be 
admitted to ride from the field to the Castle 
with the Lord Lieutenant, or his deputy, and to 
dine with him that day, and there receive all 
the honour of the table. This to be done what 
quality soever the persons are of, for the lower 
that is, the more will be the honour and perhaps 
the more the sport, and the encouragement of 
breeding will by that means extend to all sorts of 
men. 

** In the fairs the Lord Lieutenant may likewise 
be present every day in the height of them, by 
himself or deputy, and may, with the advice of the 
two chief officers of the Army then present, chuse 
out one of the best horses and two of the best 
geldings that appear in the fair, not under four, 
nor above seven years old, for which shall be 
paid to the owners of them, after sufficient testi- 
mony of their being bred in Ireland, one hundred 
pounds for the horse and fifty pounds apiece for 
the geldings. These sums, as that for the plates, 
to issue out of the revenue of Ireland, and without 
trouble or fee, and the three horses to be sent 
over every year to the King's stables. 

L 



156 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

** Both those that win the plate and those which 
are thus sold, ought immediately to be marked, 
so as they may never return a second time, either 
to the race or to the sale. The benefit by such 
an institution as this will be very great and 
various, for besides the encouragement to breed 
the best horses, from the honour and gain already 
mentioned, there will be a sort of public enter- 
tainment for one whole week, during which the 
Lord Lieutenant, the Lord Mayor of the city, and 
the great officers, both civil and military, ought to 
keep open tables for all strangers. This will draw 
a confluence of people from all parts of the country. 
Many, perhaps, from the nearer parts of England 
may come, not only as to a public kind of solemnity, 
but as to a great mart of the best horses. This 
will enrich the city by the expense of such a con- 
course, and the country by the sale of many 
horses into England, and in turn (or from thence) 
into foreign parts. 

. ** This will make personal acquaintances among 
the gentry of the kingdom, and bring the Lord 
Lieutenant to be more personally known and 
more honoured by his appearing in more great- 
ness and with more solemnity than usual upon 
these occasions — and all this with the expense 
only of two hundred and fifty pounds a year to 



DfBLlN CASTLE. 



157 



I 



I the Crown, for which the King shall have the 
three best horses sold that year in Ireland." 

This counsel of Sir Richard Temple has a true 
statesmanlike ring about it, as might be expected 
in a man so eminent, who was, moreover, the 
ancestor of a statesman ejtisdem farimr. Lord 
Palmerston, who commended himself to his 
countrymen by his courage and common sense, and 
who, moreover, was of a most " philhippic " turn, 
practically as well as theoretically. If Sir Richard 
Temple's spirit couid have been transplanted for 
one hour or two to the premises allocated at Balls' 
Bridge to horses and horse culture, by the Royal 
Dublin Society— the oldest, by the way, in the 
kingdom of its kind (it was incorporated by 
charter in. 1750), on any one of the four days in 
the last week of August, when the annual horse 
show is held — he would witness the realisation of 
his ideas and conceptions on a magnificent scale. 
He would see delegates and representatives from 
all parts of the world where horses are held in 
honour, collected together to witness more than a 
thousand hunters in esse and posse, with a few 
hacks, paraded in all their paces, and critically as 
well as scientifically judged. He would see the 
Lord Lieutenant of the time being with, perhaps. 
some of the royalties of the kingdom visiting the 
L 2 



1 



158 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

show every day, and such an array of rank, 
wealth, beauty, and fashion as no similar function 
in the kingdom can congregate ; and lastly, he 
would see a number of thoroughbred sires col- 
lected together and examined as to soundness and 
symmetry, prior to their distribution among the 
farmers of the country, to encourage them to 
breed horses on scientific rather than haphazard 
methods. In a word, he would see the embodi- 
ment or fulfilment of his aspirations. 

1707. 

Lord Pembroke was another Lord Lieutenant 
who, without any claims to greatness, was a man 
of some slight mark among the Viceroys, and 
his literary eminence, superior probably to his 
greatness as a Governor, is attested by his having 
been elected a member of the French Academy 
(*'the Immortals "), and having had the honour 
of receiving the dedication by Locke of his 
treatise on *'The Human Understanding." 

Swift and His Excellency seem to have been 
great allies, and the Dean remarked that "he 
first hit Lord Pembroke with a pun.'* Dr. 
Delany, as quoted by Foster, relates how ** the 
Vicar of Laracor found the Viceroy listening to a 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1^9 

lecture from a learned physician on the valuable 
qualities of bees, which in every other sentence he 
called a commonwealth or a nation. * Yes/ inter- 
posed Swift, * no doubt, and very ancient ; Moses 
numbers the Hivites among the nations Joshua 
was appointed to conquer.* Pembroke was de- 
lighted, and punning became his great enjoyment 
after that day." Within the last decade we, too, 
have heard of apiculture, blackberry wine, tobacco 
culture, and sericulture advocated as among the 
panaceas for Paddy Land. 

1724. 

Lord Carteret, afterwards Lord Granville, was 
among the ablest public servants who held the 
Sword of State in Ireland. Though living in 
comparatively peaceful times, it was not his lot to 
gain the benediction, or rather beatitude, of the 
Roman philosopher. ** Beatos equidem puto 
quibus deorum munere aut agenda scribere aut 
scribenda agere, beatissimos autem quibus 
utrumque contigerit." Even Horace Walpolc, his 
political opponent, styles him the ablest among 
contemporary statesmen ; and, like his successor 
in the Lord Lieutenancy, the Marquis Wellesley, 
he never gave up the charms and cultivation of 



l6o DUBLIN CASTLE. 

scholarship. Of his punnings with Dean Swift, 
Foster has left us some good examples, and it is 
recorded that when Swift was in trouble about the 
Drapier's letters, he went to see Lord Carteret at 
the Castle, and having been kept ** making anti- 
chamber,'* as the French put it, for an unconscion- 
able time, he lost patience, and wrote with his 
diamond ring on one of the panes of glass — 



My very good Lord 'tis a very hard task 

For a man to wait here who has nothing to ask.' 



Lord Carteret, coming in soon after the Dean's 
departure, saw the couplet, and wrote under it — 

" My very good Dean there are few who come here 
But have something to ask and something to fear." 

On the fall of Sir Robert Walpole, *' the Grand 
Corrupter," he was made Prime Minister of 
England. 

Lord Carteret was a special favourite of 
George L, as he was the only minister who could 
talk with him in German. He was twice Lord 
Lieutenant, and afterwards Prime Minister. 

1745- 

Among the universally lauded and lamented 
Lord Lieutenants in Ireland, no name suggests 



DUBLIN CASTLE. l6l 

Itself With more spontaneity, so to speak, than 
that of Philip Dormer, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, 
though his reign was too short for great results, 
or even for the fruition of the harvest, whose 
seeds he had scattered on the good soil of his 
satrapy. It was Chesterfield's privilege, in an 
age of venality and corruption, to have had clear 
hands and a clean conscience. He was not, per- 
haps, a great statesman, and war he never essayed, 
but we know that he proved an able diplomatist ; 
and it was, perhaps, owing to his exceedingly 
clever conduct of contemporary affairs in Ireland 
that the advent of the Pretender in the '45 
created, perhaps, rather less excitement in a most 
excitable island, than the more recent manoeuvres 
of the Mahdi, who in the Press and on the plat- 
form did not lack a strong body of sympathisers. 
Lord Chesterfield was very much in advance of 
his age in the spirit of toleration, as well as in the 
infusion of the maxims and principles of common 
sense into politics. He was, with that mythic 
power of whom the Roman lyrist tells us, a 
welcome guest at celestial banquets, and also — 

*' Gratus et imis," 

for to them he was considerate and kind — in a 
word, a gentleman. An able Irish writer talks of 



1 62 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

him ** as holding the balance even between the 
Catholics and Protestants, protecting the estab- 
lishment, yet never wounding religious liberty ; 
repressing lawlessness, yet never chilling the 
affections of a turbulent but warm-hearted people ; 
the arbiter, but not the slave of parties ; " yet he 
held office in the plenitude of the penal period. 
Lord Chesterfield was born in 1695 and found 
his way early to Cambridge, where he became a 
devotee to classical lore and literature, skilled in 
the ancients. St. German's, a borough that 
perhaps gave Lord St. Germans his title, 
found him a seat in Parliament, where he soon 
showed that he did not mean to be a ** muta 
persona " or mere ** candle - snuffer," for he 
always held that speech-making, not less than 
shoemaking, were arts acquirable by all, main- 
taining that only thirty members hearkened to 
reasoHy while the rest were *' people!' He sat for 
Lostwithiel in 1726, was sent as minister to the 
Hague, and got the Garter for his services. We 
next find him perorating as a patriot against 
privilege, and his argument that by our constitu- 
tion " the King could do no wrong, while he could 
do any amount of good," was ingenious. He 
spoke very ably against the proposal that the 
King should be allowed to levy troops without his 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 63 

Parliament, on the freedom of the stage, on the 
presence of pensioners in Parliament, on the stand- 
ing army of 18,000, on Hanoverian soldiers being 
introduced into England, and so on. Neither 
Mr. Gladstone nor Mr. Shaw-Lefevre could have 
enunciated more ** patriotic " sentiments than he 
did. For instance, talking of a statesman, he 
remarked, ** I shall never advise him to pursue 
any measure that is contrary to the sentiments of 
the majority of his subjects. A free people must 
be treated like a fine woman. If she has now 
and then a little caprice, you must not flatly con- 
tradict her ; you must give way, or at least seem 
to give way, to her humour, till by good treatment 
and a delicate opposition you find an opportunity 
to give a turn to her temper. This is the only 
way by which you can clap a padlock upon her 
mind, and this, in my opinion, is the only padlock 
in which there is any security. A free people 
must be treated in the same manner, for if you do 
not clap the padlock upon their mind, you must 
govern them by force, which puts an end to their 
freedom and, in my opinion, to your security'' 
Able, too, were his denunciations of gin as a 
medium of revenue (though the Bishops voted in 
its favour), and of perpetuating the penalties of 
treason, being very strong in his invective against 



164 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

delatores or informers, and the traducers of ** the 
Bonny Traitor," alias the traitor who would cut 
up well! He married a natural daughter of 
George I., Melusina de Schulenberg, but his only 
family seems to have been by Madame du 
Bouchet, the mother of that son to whom he 
devoted his life and letters. He was nominated 
Plenipotentiary to the Hague and Lord Lieu- 
tenant of Ireland at the same time, and addressing 
the Parliament of Ireland with reference to the 
Roman Catholics, spoke of their ** speculative 
errors as only deserving pit)^ if their pernicious 
influence upon civil society did not require and 
authorise restraint." His first passion was to 
excel — aXiv apLOTeveLP /cat vnepeKov efi/jLevai aXXcjv — 
next to please, in which he greatly succeeded. 
His speeches, if a trifle didactic, like Bulwer 
Lytton's, were very argumentative and forcible. 
His essays in *' the World " of that day would, we 
fancy, be welcomed in **the World" of this, though 
rather cynical and slightly Sallustian in tone. 
His Viceregal style was splendid, and he found 
the income very liberal, as he speaks of that place 
being one of much more pleasure and profit than 
that of Secretary of State. He beautified the 
Phoenix Park greatly, where the Chesterfield 
column and the fine avenue of secular elms attest 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 65 

his good taste. No poet, he could write good 
verses. Thus, in his advice to a lady in 
autumn, is the couplet — 

" The dews of the evening most carefully shun, 
The tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.'* 

Dr. Johnson, whose stern criticism of the 
famous letters is well known, succumbed to the 
grace and • graciousness of Lord Chesterfield^s 
manner. In those libelled letters are yvStfiai 
that will live long, perhaps as long as Roche- 
foucalt's — such as when apropos of foolish customs, 
he said, " Diogenes, the cynic, was a wise man for 
despising them, but a fool for showing it." " Be 
wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell 
them so." In spite of a milk diet contributed by 
an ass, a cow, and a goat, he died in 1773. His 
son predeceased him in 1756. He had seen 
him an M.P. and Minister to Dresden. His 
Lordship held London the best place to live in 
and to die in, or the most convenient, rather ; like 
Archilaus, he held human nature to be invariably 
the same everywhere. 

1767 

Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, a chronicler of courts 
and courtiers, confirms what we have said about 



1 66 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Lord Townsend*s comparative political impotence, 
which was shared by nearly all the Viceroys of 
Ireland henceforward. 

'* He was a nobleman of very considerable 
ability, but of great eccentricity of manners and 
character, which seemed sometimes to approach 
almost to alienation of mind. Cheerful in his 
disposition, void of all pride or affectation, com- 
municative, affable, convivial, facetious, and en- 
dowed with uncommon powers of conversation, 
he was formed to acquire popularity. He 
eminently possessed the dangerous talent of 
drawing caricatures, a faculty which he did not 
always restrain within the limits of severe 
prudence, though he no more spared himself than 
he did others. It is well known that he drew his 
own portrait, habited in the state dress of a Lord 
Lieutenant, having his hands tied behind him, in 
order to show how destiliUe he was of political 
power, or of the means of conferring favours. 
This allegorical picture, I have been assured, was 
hung up in a private cabinet of the Castle at 
Dublin, and when solicited to bestow offices or 
rewards, over which he had no control, he used to 
conduct the importunate suitor into the room, at 
the same time asking him if he recognised the 
likeness and understood the application. In 



DUBLIN CASTLE. IO7 

Ireland, while administering the affairs of that 
kingdom during five years, he gave general satis- 
faction, and I remember Courtenay eulogising him 
in the House of Commons in the language which 
Horace uses to Augustus : — 

" * Longas, O Utinam, Dux bone, Farias 
Praestes Hibernise ; dicimus integro 
Sicci mane Die, dicimus uvidi. 
Cum SoJ oceano sul;)est.' 

" Indeed, not one of the Viceroys sent over to 
Dublin in the course of twelve years, between 
1 772 and 1784 could compete with Lord Town- 
send in the affection of the Irish. Lord Harcourt 
was too grave and measured in his manners. 
The Earl of Bugkinghamshire had too cold, stiff, 
and lofty a deportment. Lord Carlisle was too 
fine a gentleman, and too highly bred; the Duke 
of Portland and Earl Temple, both, either from 
disinclination, or from physical inability, observed 
too rigorously the virtues of temperance and 
abstemiousness, virtues by no means congenial to 
the soil ; lastly. Lord Northington was too infirm ' 
in his health to acquire general attachment in a 
country where no qualities, however meritorious, 
could recommend to national approbation, unless 
accompanied by personal sacrifices and exertions 



1 68 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

of various kinds. The Duke of Rutland, whom 
Pitt sent over to the sister kingdom, early in 1 784, 
by the magnificence of his establishment, the 
conviviality of his temper, and the excesses of his 
table, in all of which particulars he resembled his 
father, the Marquis of Granby, obliterated or 
superseded Lord Townsend in their regard ; but 
he paid for the triumph with his life, falling a 
victim, within four years, to his irregularities.'* 

They entertained handsomely in Dublin in those 
days. Witness the following account drawn from 
the same reservoir as the last, of Sir John Irwine, 
who held during several years the post of Com- 
mander-in-Chief in Ireland, with very ample 
appointments and advantages, a post now held by 
General H.S.H. Prince Edward of Saxe Weimar 
with reduced pay and allowances. 

** But, no income, however large, could suffice for 
his expenses, which, being never restrained within 
any reasonable limits, finally involved him in 
irretrievable difficulties. The fact will hardly 
obtain belief, that at one of the entertainments 
which he gave to the Lord Lieutenant in the year 
1 78 1 at Dublin, he displayed on the table, as the 
principal piece in the dessert, a representation of 
the fortress of Gibraltar invested by the Spanish 
forces, executed in confectionery. It exhibited 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 169 

a faithful view of that celebrated rock, so dear 
to the English nation, together with the works, 
batteries, and artillery of the besiegers, which 
threw sugar plums against the walls. The 
expense of this ostentatious piece of magnificence 
did not fall short of ^1,500, and so incredible 
must the circumstance appear, that if I had not 
received the assurance of it from Lord Sackville I 
should not venture to repeat it in these memoirs." 
The end of Sir John was ruin and exile, but it 
is refreshing to read that the king was very good 
to him in his low estate, and did not forget his 
widow and orphans. 

1782. 

The Dutch House of Bentinck, which, after the 
revolution, became naturalised in England and 
well endowed by a grateful monarch with ** lands, 
tenements, and hereditaments," naturally gave 
many soldiers and statesmen to his service. 
Among the first was William H. L. Bentinck, 
who begun his official life under the Marquis of 
Rockingham (the only marquis of England at the 
time it is said). His honesty of purpose was 
probably greatly in excess of his administrative 
talents, for we read in Lecky's famous chapters on 



170 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Ireland, that when Lord Lieutenant in 1782, just 
after the Act of Emancipation, he was very urgent 
on the adjustment of the trade treaty between 
the two islands, suggesting that if this were 
not done, it might be better for England to 
abandon Ireland, thereby showing that his gift 
of prescience and forecast was ver)' small. How- 
ever, this Duke of Portland was ever a pillar 
of the State, for he was the prime minister of 
North and Fox's coalition government, and was 
made Chancellor of Oxford University. He 
subsequently took office under Addington. The 
Duke was an early advocate of a union between 
the twa kingdoms. 

1782. 

Lord Temple seems to have been a thoroughly 
honest Viceroy, to have taken a good measure 
of the forces at work in Ireland, and to have 
advocated a policy loyal to the independence of 
the country ; hence he supported Flood's '' Renun- 
ciation .Act." In his reign the Order of the 
Knights of St. Patrick was instituted. He was 
Viceroy under Lord Shelburne, afterwards Mar- 
quis of Lansdowne. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. I7I 

1783. 

Lord Northington's Viceroyalty was short, and 
rather uneventful ; the strides made in the Volun- 
teer movement being its chief feature. 

1784. 

The Duke of Rutland's reign lasted for some 
three years, and was, on the whole, one of great 
prosperity. Fosters Press Bill, more coercive 
than anything in modern times, curbed the 
effrenata audacia of the newspapers, who had 
indirectly, perhaps directly, incited to crime. The 
Duke, who was a bon vivant, succumbed to fever, 
and Lord Temple, now Duke of Buckingham, 

1787, 

was again made Lord Lieutenant. The Duke of 
Rutland learnt by practical experience how careful 
a Viceroy must be in his goings-in and goings-out, 
for at the theatre ** the gods " showed they were 
no respecters of rank. ** When was the Duke at 
Pegg Plunkett's ? " exclaimed one supernal from 
one side of the house. " Manners, ye dog ! " was 
the antistrophe from the other. Now, " Manners " 

M 



172- DUBLIN CASTLE, 

was his own name, and that of a famous beauty 
not unappreciated by His Excellency was Peg 
Plunkett. 

1787. 

The Duke of Buckingham's reign was one 
of peace and prosperity, though the Regency 
question caused tension, relieved, however, by the 
King's recovery. The Duke of Buckingham was 
not a popular Viceroy, though a most conscientious 
one. To him is due the breaking through of the 
prescription by which a Chancellor for Ireland was 
always imported from England. His appointee was 
the able and eloquent Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare. 
Apropos of the Duke of Rutland, who seems to 
have been a very merr)' monarch, it should be 
added that one of his convivial crazes was to 
knight some bon camarade, or survivor of the 
fittest, in the small hours of the morning, with his 
Sword of State, or its representative. On one 
occasion he was making a south-eastern tour in 
Ireland, and happened to stay at Marlfield, the 
residence of the Bagwell family, large landed 
proprietors in the County of Tipperary, and the 
owners of the greater part of its capital, Clonmel. 
While staying here he was invited to some public 
dinner, to which came all sorts and conditions of 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



173 



men ; amongst them a gentleman named Murphy 
(or whom we shall name Murphy, as it is more or 
less a "generic" name). This guest "had made 
his head " early in life, and could appropriately 
join in the song — 



" For still I think 
That I can drink 
With man that wears s 



hood, si 



and towards morning few were left in the fierce 
(liquor) fray save His Excellency, Mr. Murphy, 
and some seasoned casks on whom liquor had as 
much effect as water on a duck's back. The 
Duke admired him greatly for his " staying 
powers," and insisted on giving him the knightly 
accolade then and there. Morning brings reflec- 
tion, and it occurred to His Excellency that he 
had knighted a subject who could hardly be 
described as chivalrous. So he sent for him, told 
him to consider the whole thing a foolish frolic ; 
and seeing that Murphy hesitated, offered him a 
handsome douceur " to be off." But the latter 
replied readily, " I thank your Excellency very 
much; I do not care for titles myself; but the 
fact is, I told Lady Murphy of the honour you 
bestowed upon me. and for that reason we cannot 
forego it." 




174 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

The Duke was by no means a water drinker, 
or ** hydropot/* to use the current slang, but they 
gave his name to a pump near the Royal Bar- 
racks, which has lately been disestablished and 
demolished. The Duchess of Rutland is said to 
have been a great beauty. 

1795- 

One of the most sensational scenes in the great 
Irish drama — a drama in which tragedy and 
comedy so constantly alternated — took place in 
1795. The following rough outline of the situ- 
ation will give some idea of the events that led 
up to the appointment of Lord FitzwilHam as 
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in that year. The 
Parliamentary wedge that separated parties in the 
English and Irish Houses of Parliament was the 
Catholic question, and its solution, whether by 
absolute or modified emancipation from the fetters 
that bound the many members of this religious 
denomination socially, financially, and politically. 
To a great extent, the bringing forward of this 
question at all was a declaration of war d outrance 
with the oligarchical system that obtained gene- 
rally ; but this was chiefly felt in Dublin, where 
Protestant ascendancy was not only a spirited 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



175 



slogan and rallying cry, but was also a source of 
wealth and power to the fortunate few who prob- 
ably conceived that the very examination of such 
a question was as heterodoxical as the defamation 
of Diana by a peripatetic preacher named Paul 
seemed to the Ephesian silversmiths and shrine- 
makers ! However, the prophets of Emancipation 
had great names on their side — amongst them 
those of Pitt, the Duke of Pordand, Lord Fitz- 
william, Lord Spencer, Edmund Burke, William 
Wyndham. Grattan, the Ponsonbys (George and 
William), Sir H. Langrishe, Sir John Parnell. 
with many more. The inflexibles mainly relied 
on the immense influence of Lord Clare and John 
Beresford, Lord Clare was the great and eloquent 
Fitzgibbon. the Irish Chancellor, Mr. Beresford 
was the second or third son (Burke says second) 
of Lord Tyrone, who had married the heiress of 
the Powers, or De la Peers of Curraghmore. in 
the CO. Waterford, and was raised to the peerage 
of Tyrone, which his wife's family had long re- 
presented. His grandfather had come over in the 
reign of James 1., as the Manager of the Corpo- 
ration of Londoners, known by the name of the 
Society of the New Plantation in Ulster; and 
having a keen eye for advancement, or personal 
progress, like many of his clever, enterprising 




176 DTTBLIN castle; 

race, laid the foundations for the future fortunes 
of his family, to whom Church and State alike 
yielded rich revenues. John Beresford, barrister- 
at-law, was appointed in 1770 a Commissioner of 
the Revenue in Ireland, and presided for many 
years at the Board. In two years he added to 
this function the patent office of Taster of the 
Wines in the Port of Dublin ; but whether by 
conspicuous ability, dint of hard work, and well 
directed industry, or by the extension of his per* 
sonal and family influence, certain it is that his 
civic greatness became, in many eyes, overween- 
ing ; and it was popularly said at the time that 
Dublin was "a Beresford village." His second 
marriage to Miss Montgomery, of Magpie Hill, 
N.B., increased vastly the number of his powerful 
connections, and, in fact, John Beresford was 
a power in Ireland who had to be reckoned with, 
not une quantite negligeable by any means* 

With a view of extending Catholic conciliation 
Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over by Pitt to Ireland 
as Lord Lieutenant ; and what his exact powers 
and instructions from the Prime Minister were is 
not known, and probably never will be precisely 
laid down ; but we do know that Lord Fitzwilliam 
received the warmest welcome on landing in 
Ireland, and the national enthusiasm was kindled 



DUBLIN CASTLE, 177 

to great heat. Almost his first official act was to 
break up what Burke called " the Junto," by dis- 
missing Beresford and the law oiificers. " Surtout 
pas trop de zele," was a motto not yet in common 
currency, perhaps not even coined — if Talleyrand 
was its real author. Certainly it was not adopted 
by the new Viceroy ; and Pitt was so worked 
upon by the King's Protestant proclivities, and 
perhaps by Beresford's friends and supporters, 
that Lord Fitzwilliam was, in official parlance, 
commanded to execute the happy despatch by 
immediate resignation ; upon which, Lord Clare, 
Foster, the Speaker, and the Primate, were ap- 
pointed Lord Justices, Mr. Beresford, too, was 
reinstated in his office, and all the Catholic hopes 
and aspirations were dashed to the ground. It 
would be too long to dwell here on the demon- 
strations of unfeigned sorrow that marked the 
25th of March in Dublin and its suburbs. All 
business was suspended, and a procession miles in 
length escorted the Earl to the place of embarka- 
tion for England ; leading citizens yoking them- 
selves to his carriage, and drawing it to the 
seashore ! A national funeral to buried hope! 
Plowden tells us of an address on the subject 
from the Students of Dublin University to 
Grattan ; to which the patriot replied, in the 



178 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Stilted phrase of the period, commencing: ''In- 
genuous young men, for this effusion of the heai't, 
I owe you more than ordinary gratitude." 

Thus far have we advanced into the bowels of 
this great quarrel ; the curious sequel remains to 
be told as briefly as may be. Lord Fitzwilliam 
had, it seems, printed for private circulation 
certain vindications, or pieces justificatives of his 
official career of a few weeks. The reflections on 
Mr. Beresford*s character contained in the sen- 
tence : " because he was a person under universal 
and heavy suspicions, subject to the opprobrium 
and unpopularity attendant on maladministration 
and much imputed malversation," led to a chal- 
lenge from the inculpated officer of Revenue, to 
which Lord Fitzwilliam replied thus : 

** Sunday Morning, 28th June, 1795. 
"(Delivered by Lord George Cavendish.) 

** Sir, — I have the honour to announce to you 
my presence in town. As I could not mis- 
understand the object of your letter, I have 
only to signify that I am ready to attend your 
call, and have the honour to be. Sir, 

** Your most obedient servant, 

" Wentwokth Fitzwilliam." 



DUBLIN CASTLE. I 79 

Lord George Cavendish was Lord Fitzwilliam's 
second, Sir George Montgomery Mr. Beresford s 
in the absence of Lord Townshend, who was 
unable to come in time, and the ground was 
actually paced — a field beyond Paddington — 
when a magistrate intervened, and the duel was 
prevented. Lord Fitzwilliam subsequently 
apologised, and hands were shaken. It will be 
recollected that Sir John Perrot long ago had 
offered to decide matters with Desmond by 
the duelloy which the latter declined. A few 
years later the Duke of Wellington fought 
Lord Winchelsea, and Canning and Castlereagh 
exchanged shots — these were the palmy days of 
duelling ! 

1795. 

Lord Cornwallis* predecessor in office was 
Lord Camden, who had a very difficult part to 
play in leading up to the Union. He was the 
son of the famous legist who was raised to the 
peerage. His son gained a further step in the 
ladder of honour and dignities, for he was made 
a marquis. He was also given the Garter in 
recognition of his Irish services. Wraxall tells 
us how George III., when he learned that the 



l80 DUBLIiNf CASTLE. 

name of his new knight was to be John Jeffreys, 
seemed half to repent the appointment, adding 
that he had never given the accolade to any one 
with such a name ! 

1798. 

Charles Mann, the first Marquis Cornwallis, if 
not one of England's greatest men in war or 
statesmanship, stands very high on her list of 
worthies as one whose predominant idea in life 
coincided with that of the great Duke of Welling- 
ton, **how best to carry on the King's Govern- 
ment " (by-the-bye, it is something of a coincidence 
that Wellington and Cornwallis each commanded 
the 33rd regiment). Junius in his day made some 
strictures on the brightness and vigour of Corn- 
wallis' intellectual capacity ; no one ever questioned 
his integrity of purpose, his honour, or sincerity. 
Like Sir Charles Metcalfe, who at the urgent 
request of the Premier and Colonial Secretary of 
the day, accepted the government, first of Jamaica 
and then of Canada, at a time when he knew that 
he was stricken by a malady from which recovery 
was more than doubtful, he was always ready to 
go to the post of danger and duty at the shortest 
notice ; and his unselfish acceptance, for the third 



DUBLIN CASTLE. iSl 

time, of the post of Cover nor- General of India, 
when he might well have said, Hke the wornnDut 

gladiator, Veianuis, cited by Horace — 

"Non eadem est setas, non mens," 

and pleaded like him for a well earned rest, was 
but a sample of the spirit that animated him 
through a long and busy career, spent in the 
service of the State. 

Lord Comwallis had, as we all know, his 
brilliant successes and his dark reverses in his 
American service ; but in India his progress was 
one of victory, and thoroughly appreciated by his 
countrymen and the East India Company ; but it is 
as the Commander-in-Chief and Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland in very troublous times that we are just 
■now interested in Lord Comwallis ; and it is in a 
great measure due to the far-reaching wisdom of 
men of his stamp, who could temper firmness with 
humanity, and rise above the fury of faction, that 
we owe that "auspicium melioris sevi," which, 
though tardy in its coming, still makes sensible 
progress : and here Lord Comwallis may be 
bracketed with such master minds as Lords 
Wellesley and Chesterfield {or Sidney before 
them), who lent a deaf ear to the cuckoo cry. 



1 82 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

** Can any good thing come out of Gallilee ? " 
and could descry merit even in an Irishman whose 
faith did not quite conform to their own. "It is 
said that your Lordship employs a Catholic coach- 
man," wrote, according to tradition, or it may be 
history, some great functionary in England to the 
latter nobleman. " Well, what does it matter," 
was the reply, **so long as he does not drive me 
to mass ! " And something of the same spirit and 
temper was in Lord Cornwallis at a period when 
sects and factions were nearly as bitter and violent 
as were those of the ill-fated Jews (from whom 
some hold the Irish are sprung) at the memorable 
siege of Jerusalem by Titus. 

The danger that underlay the rebellion of 
1798, which Lord Cornwallis was sent to quell as 
Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief, was 
that no one could precisely gauge its extent or 
proportions, or say when the many men tainted 
with disloyalty, and just then ** sitting on the 
fence," as a good many were, would think it 
opportune to join the malcontents ; and then there 
was the constant danger of French invasion when 
the occasion offered. General Moore's successes 
in Wexford, however, saved the Government 
from present peril, and when it came to dealing 
with the prisoners. Lord Cornwallis* combination 



DUBLIN CASTLE, 1 83 

of great firmness with humanitarian principles 
proved most conspicuous. " Catholicism " had 
been generally substituted for '■'■Jacobinism" and 
all his Excellency's efforts were now directed to 
mitigate the " odium theologicum," for, as he 
wrote to General Ross: "The violence of our 
friends and their folly in endeavouring to make it 
a religious war, added to the ferocity of our 
troops, who delight in murder^ most powerfully 
counteract all plans of conciliation." His task 
was not an enviable one, or even satisfactory, as 
he tells us — "The life of a L.ord Lieutenant in 
Ireland comes up to my idea of perfect misery, 
but if I can accomplish the great object of 
consolidating the British Empire I shall be suffi- 
ciently repaid." His opinion of the Irish Militia 
was not favourable; "They are totally without 
discipline, contemptible before the enemy, when 
any serious resistance is made to them, but 
ferocious and cruel in the extreme when any poor 
wretches, either with or without arms, come 
within their power; in short, murder appears to be 
their favourite pastime ;" in fact, like Abercromby, 
he held this force to be only formidable to their 
friends. 

Like Pitt, he held the Union to be salvation 
to Ireland, as we find him writing confidentially 




184 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

to General Ross : " People s minds are getting 
cooler, and I have no doubt of their being 
sufficiently manageable for all ordinary purposes, 
but I do not know how they will be brought to 
act on the great measure of all, on the event of 
which the safety of Great Britain and Ireland so 
much depends." The action of the Longford 
and the Kilkenny Militia at Castlebar confirmed 
Lord Cornwallis' diagnosis to the letter. But 
with the able co-operation of General Lake the 
Castlebar calamity was soon effaced by the 
capture of the entire French force, whose move- 
ments seem to have been singularly badly 
planned by Humbert, who was most reckless of 
life, unless indeed he was deceived in his expec- 
tations of Irish aid. 

Early in the autumn Mr. Pelham resigned the 
Chief Secretaryship, and the place was given to 
Lord Castlereagh, a man who had quickly won the 
complete confidence of Lord Cornwallis — by-the- 
bye, Lord Castlereagh's appointment seems to 
have been an innovation on the unwritten law 
that prescribed that an Englishman only should 
fill this important position. Lord Cornwallis' 
next year was spent in efforts to educate the 
public mind towards the Union, but the more 
violent of the victorious party were strenuously 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 1 85 

to him "as an object of disgust and 
abhorrence," at least in the opinion of Dr. 
Duigenan, their spokesman. According to the 
latter, Lord Cornwallis himself, through the 
odium he had acquired, was a bar to the Union 
by his very advocacy of it. Meanwhile, the 
Viceroy writes to Genera! Ross : " How I long 
to kuk those whom my public duty obliges me to 
court ; if I did not hope to get out of this country 
I should most earnestly pray for immediate 
death.'' Death soon afterwards very nearly came 
to his rescue, as he was fired at by a sentry who 
challenged him and got no reply. The Union, 
after a long struggle, was at length carried in 
spite of the menace of civil war, and so convinced 
was Colonel Maitland of his Excellency's political 
foresight, that he wrote to Mr. Huskisson : " If 
his plans be hereafter steadily followed, Ireland 
will be a jewel — if changed, a thorn in the British 
Empire." Words somewhat prophetic! Here is 
Lord Cornwallis' opinion of the Act of Union: 
" This country could not be saved without the 
Union, but you must not take it for granted that 
it will be saved by it." After the passing of the 
measure came the apportionment of rewards. 
His Excellency was, he said, offered a dukedom, 
but declined it. One of Lord Cornwallis' last 



1 86 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

despatches was to plead for clemency towards 
Mr. Napper Tandy. His work being finished, 
the Viceroy longed impatiently for what he styled 
his release, but there was difficulty in finding a 
successor for some time. He at last appeared 
in the person of the Earl of Hardwicke, in 
whose favour Lord Cornwallis . retired for a 
few days to the Lodge in the park to wind 
up his business. At his recommendation Lord 
Clanricarde was appointed " Master of Kilmain- 
ham," which implied the command of the forces 
in Ireland. 

It is a matter of history how all Lord Corn 
wallis' hopes for the Union proving an entrance 
gate to the penetralia of the Constitution for 
the Catholics were frustrated. The general 
opinion attributes the failure of pledges and pro- 
mises to the inveteracy of His Majesty's obstinacy, 
and danger to the stability of his mind by or 
in urging Catholic claims. By some historians 
Mr. Pitt's sincerity in the matter is questioned, 
but there seems no valid reason for coming to 
an unfavourable conclusion. No one, however, 
can doubt Lord Cornwallis' candour and honesty 
in the matter, and his correspondence confirms 
this opinion. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



187 



rSoo. 



I 



To the Earl of Hardwicke was entrusted the 
charge of the Province created by Pitt through 
the Act of Union and incorporation. He was 
young and eminently handsome, with considerable 
charm of manner and some felicity of expression, 
and one of the acts of his earlier life seemed to 
give some assurance that bigotry and intolerance 
were foreign to his nature, for when in command 
of his regiment of Militia {the Cambridgeshire) 
in England, he had issued an order prohibiting 
his men from joining the Orange Society, which 
had its propagandists and missionaries in all 
directions, with the view of creating a gigantic 
and overwhelmingly irresistible association both 
in Church and State. 

Abbott, who was afterwards Speaker, and 
raised to the Peerage as Baron Colchester, was 
his Chief Secretary, and there was a general hope 
cherished that even-handed justice and clemency 
would tend to obliterate the horrors and atrocities 
committed freely on both sides in the late rebellion, 
for the Loyalists were triumphant and victorious 
— the Catholics quelled and subdued, while their 
aristocracy and leaders of position, though zealous 
for emancipation from the fetters imposed upon 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



1807. 

The Duke of Richmond, who succeeded His 
Grace of Bedford, was the nominee of the 
Portland-Percival Government, and may therefore 
be supposed to have taken his colour, or political 
complexion, from that anti-Catholic combination, 
or coalition, but to his credit, be it said, he evinced 
bigotry nowhere, and some of his sentiments and 
enunciations might have been put into the mouth 
of his predecessor, or even of Fitzwilliam, the 
chosen champion of the Catholic cause. For 
instance, when at Cork (on his Munster tour), 
the toast of Protestant Ascendancy was given. 
His Excellency declared that the only ascendancy 
he wished to see flourish in his dominions was 
the Ascendancy of Loyalty— brave words, but 
hardly carried out in practice by "the system" of 
which he was an integral part. At his accession, 
or. to speak more correctly, on his arrival, he 
found two great questions in occupation of the 
public mind. One was the Catholic claims, more 
especially in connection with the veto on the 
appointment of their Bishops, claimed by the 
British Government, and the state of the Prisons, 
which was simply scandalous, and very dif- 
ferent from what it is now — even for first class 



196 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

misdemeanants, whose constitutions must have 
been wonderfully strong to have survived the 
treatment for any length of time. Sandy's Pre- 
vost, in the Castle Yard, and Trevor s cells, are 
said to have gained a bad pre-eminence among 
these jails. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had 
managed to push on his Police Bill, was the 
nominal Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, 
but he was absent at the Convention of Cintra, 
already perhaps meditating the famous lines of 
Torres Vedras for his great base in the campaigns 
that so soon followed. So great was the avowed 
corruption in the House of Commons, that when 
a member — Mr. Maddox — brought charges of 
bribery against Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Quintin 
Dick, even the Opposition showed themselves 
most lukewarm in their condemnation of an 
offence so common and so venial, though venal. 
Then, too, as in the present Session of Parlia- 
ment, tithes were a very burning question ; for 
their incidence was fearfully unequal — the rich 
grazing tracts held by the gentry and middle- 
men being declared exempt, while the burden fell 
on the tilth of the small farmer, or cotter, who, 
to paraphrase Shakespeare, "No revenue had 
save his strong labour.'' 

Then the balances allowed (corruptly) to lie 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



197 



perdu (the word was sometimes prophetic) in the 
hands of well backed collectors of taxes and 
revenue, were nearly double those of England, and 
when a commission of enquiry was granted on the 
occasion of Mr. Beaucham Hill being appointed 
to a lucrative post in the Revenue, he confessed 
that when an Excise officer he had levied a tribute 
of 20 guineas from every still in his " walk ; " 
while of 30 officers examined on this occasion 27 
acknowledged that they were Bridees, driven to it 
by the smallness of their salaries. A writer of some 
repute sets down the robbery to the revenue at 
between one and two millions a year. Nor did 
the House seem much surprised at these revela- 
tions. A Government place must have been a fair 
berth in those days. 

In his Munster tour, or " Progress " (to use a 
term of more Viceregal sound), the Duke of 
Richmond seems to have cultivated a tone of 
liberal impartiality ; thus he was the guest at 
Limerick of a Catholic banker, Mr. Roche, whom 
he offered to knight, but Mr. Roche declined the 
honour. The Duke of Portland's resignation led 
soon to changes in the ministerial departments. 
Ca.stlereagh and Canning, who had quarrelled and 
fought, were, for the time being, in a sort of 
quarantine ; three Irishmen were added to its 



k. 



198 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Strength, namely the Marquis of Wellesley, 
Wellesley Pole, and William Croker, the rather 
eminent writer, who, the son of a Revenue 
officer in Ireland, had been educated at Port- 
arlington, and became a Protagonist in the Tory 
ranks. 

We have thus had a few glimpses of the Duke 
of Richmond, who remained at the Castle till 18 10 
in his official capacity, and, as it were, in his robes 
of state, proclaiming ** Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo 
discrimine agetur." Contemporary chroniclers 
maintain that he had a very jovial side, as the 
following excerpt from a county history, printed for 
private circulation only, will show. 

" Lord de Blaquiere had been Secretary of State 
from the year 1772 to 1777, from which period, 
though he ceased to hold any employment, he 
enjoyed the confidence of the government, and 
was extensively engaged and employed in bringing 
about the Union, for which, besides various offices 
and pensions, he obtained his peerage. He 
purchased Portlomon, being part of the Pakenham 
property. 

** Although having ceased to hold any Govern- 
ment situation, he by no means wished to 
relinquish his intimacy with the Castle, and con- 
tinued to supply his Excellency with the choicest 



DUBLIN CASTLE. I99 

and most exquisite fruits from his hothouses. 
Upon several occasions he invited the Viceregal 
party to pay him a visit, but always without 
success, until at some period between 1807 and 
1810 the Duke of Richmond, then Lord Lieu- 
tenant, very unexpectedly intimated his intention 
to accept an invitation to Portlomon, being 
extremely anxious to witness an Irish ' Pattern,' 
for which at that period Lough Owel was cele- 
brated, and which Pattern was annually held on 
the first Sunday in August in the demesne of 
Portlomon, It is needless to say a word about the 
convivial habits of his Grace. The results were 
in many instances highly amusing, although they 
at times departed considerably from the dignity of 
a Court. At an advanced period of the night he 
has been known to confer the honour of knight- 
hood for service performed, and to promote a 
humble clergyman to a rich deanery after a very 
protracted discussion of spiritual matters. On his 
Excellency's intention being made known to Lord 
de Blaquiere, he endeavoured to ascertain from 
some of the A.D.C.'s the probable duration of 
his Grace's sojourn at Portlomon, which was 
fixed, whether by authority or not, to extend two 
or three days. Lord de Blaquiere immediately made 
such preparations as the shortness of the period 



200 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

would admit of, and furnished the cellar with what 
he conceived would be an ample supply for the 
duration of the visit which his Excellency proposed 
paying. A hogshead of claret, and four dozen of 
madeira, port, and sherry, all of the best quality and 
finest vintage, were immediately forwarded and 
stored in the cellars of Portlomon. His Excel- 
lency and staff arrived, comprising the usual number 
of A.D.C.'s — a mischievous, reckless, and jolly set. 
Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Field Marshal 
Duke of Wellington, was then Secretary of State. 
Amongst other gentlemen of the county who were 
invited to meet his Excellency was Admiral 
Pakenham, from whom I heard the story. The 
company next day was numerous, the wine excel- 
lent and plenty, the cooking varied and superior, 
being the production of the Soyer of the day, the 
fruit rare and delicately flavoured. His Excel- 
lency during the morning transacted his official 
business and visited the different localities in the 
neighbourhood. The fourth day arrived, and no 
intimation of a break up. The claret was visibly 
decreasing from the united efforts of the party. 
The other wines were diminishing from the 
exertions of the household. At the period of which 
we write the intercourse between the country 
and the city was not even as expeditious as at 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



present. Even now, with all our improvements, 
it is by no means certain when we arrive at the 
end of our journey, as persons leaving Mullingar 
at half-past seven in the evening by the railway 
to attend a ball in Dublin, do not arrive at the 
beautiful terminus in that city until half-past six 
next morning. An insurmountable difficulty 
therefore arose in procuring additional supplies of 
wine if required. Lord de Blaquiere was in a 
most woeful predicament. He therefore, in a 
fatal moment, and as a last resource, resolved to 
take Admiral Pakenham into his counsel and 
obtain his advice and assistance. He was no 
sooner made acquainted with the unfortunate state 
of the garrison than he gave the Lord a promise 
of a speedy relief from the exhausting party. This 
was too good a joke for the Admiral to keep it 
secret, and immediately communicated the entire 
to the Duke of Richmond, who instantly agreed 
not to budge one step. Every morning Lord 
de Blaquiere and the Admiral held a cabinet 
council, and the remaining stores were examined. 
It now became too late to get things from Dublin, 
and there were only two days' supply in the house. 
The next day being Saturday, his Excellency 
expressed his regret at being obliged to leave on 
Monday after seeing the ' Pattern.' The day of 




202 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

the Pattern arrived. His Excellency and his 

friends enlivened the scene with their presence, 

and at the accustomed hour sat down to dinner. 

Everything went on as usual, and late in the 

evening, but long before the Lord Lieutenant s 

usual hour for retiring, the circulation of the bottle 

became tedious, and ultimately entirely ceased. 

The dreadful truth must be told — the claret was 

out ! His Grace affected considerable surprise, 

but told his host he would rather prefer some 

port. The household had unfortunately had the 

last bottle. Well ! Sherry or madeira ? All 

gone! Under such unexpected misfortunes, the 

Lord Lieutenant really preferred whiskey punch. 

But, alas ! not a drop in the house. What was to 

be done ? His Grace, in all horror of sobriety, 

appeared indignant at such unheard of treatment. 

The host was for a time speechless, and could 

not suggest anything. A supply from Mullingar 

was reported as too tedious, uncertain, and not 

drinkable if procured. The unfeeling and cutting 

remarks of the A.D.C.'s were insupportable. The 

regret and apologies of the host were neither 

received nor felt. His Excellency declared he 

could not stir without a supply of something ; he 

cared not what, but without it he should be ill. 

The Admiral, I suppose, by way of assisting his 



J 



DUBLIN CASXr.E. 203 

iend. said, 'Oh, sooner than ycur Excellency 

t-^oiild incur a fit of illness, we'll sell by auction 

ome of the fellow's furniture and send to Bun- 

r brusna for whiskey. The devil pity him. He 

■should not ask people here without the means of 

entertaining them ! ' This proposal was loudly 

cheered, but a difficulty still existed ; where shall 

we find bidders? It was suggested that if any 

of the people that they saw at the Pattern were 

still there, they would be rejoiced at the oppor- 

I tunity of procuring bargains. Very few moments 

I sufficed to assemble a number of bidders to 

I constitute an auction. Some of the beds and 

Other pieces of furniture were brought out 

before the hall door, and on a fine summer's 

'night. The Admiral acted as auctioneer, under 

the superintendence of the Government ; the 

*• Chief Secretary as clerk. The terms were 

k money down, for which a supply of ardent spirits 

f was procured from the village of Bunbrusna, 

[tfThe company returned to bed highly pleased 

Twith the exception of the host) with the last 

tiight ever passed by a Viceregal party at Port 

bmon," 

Let me add that Portlomon has long since those 
;. days passed into the hands of the Greville Nugent 
I family, whose hospitable head, Lord Greville of 




• 



• 



204 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Clonhugh, has a far less easily exhaustible cellar 
at the opposite side of that inland sea, Lough 
Owell. It seems hard to understand how the 
train from MuUingar to Dublin could be a whole 
livelong night compassing some fifty miles! 
Under Sir Ralph Cusack's improved management, 
and metals, the journey now occupies not very 
much more than an hour by the express trains 
of the Midland and Great Western Railway. 

1813. 

To the Duke of Richmond succeeded Ear! 
Whitworth, a nobleman of sound judgment and 
most varied accomplishments. He had been 
employed in several diplomatic missions, and 
while at Paris had foiled Napoleon in his attempt 
to brow-beat him in the Salle des Ambassadcurs, 
In Ireland his reign was much troubled by distur- 
bance and agitation, the result of the tithe collec- 
tion, which was made sometimes with hardship, 
while its incidence was unfair, the poorer tenants 
being more severely mulcted than the wealthier 
sheep and cattle farmers. The peasant soldiers 
in this campaign against tithe were known as 
*'Caravats" and " Shanavests,** while in the 
King's County the opponents of the system 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 205 

adopted the abominable practice of " carding." 
Hence it was necessary to renew the Insurrection 
Act, and proclaim certain counties, as in the 
present day. Meanwhile, the agitation for complete 
Catholic emancipation was proceeding, but with 
somewhat slow and irregular steps, though young 
Counsellor O'Connell, who brought a combination 
of Celtic energy and Celtic subtlety and con- 
siderable elocution and histrionic ability to bear 
on the great question in which he himself had a 
strong personal interest, was certain to accelerate 
the movement, of which the cautious, courteous, 
and most moderate Earl of Fingall had hitherto 
been the fugleman. It was in Lord Whitworth's 
time that the famous duel between O'Connell and 
Mr. D'Eslerre was fought at Bishopscourt, now 
the residence of the Earl of Cionmell, but at that 
time the property of Lord Ponsonby. The 
Corporation of Dublin was then a very close 
borough, and Mr. D'Esterre belonged to it. 
O'Connell was never very guarded or self- 
restrained in his choice of language {indeed, it 
may be doubted whether he would ever have 
acquired and retained his firm grasp of the 
popular mind had his vocabulary been more select 
and refined). He characterised the Corporation 
of Dublin as "beggarly;" he refused to disavow 
o 2 




206 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

or qualify the language when called on to do 
so by Mr. D'Esterre, and the consequence was 
a hostile meeting, in which Mr. O'ConnelFs friend 
was Major Macnamara, while Mr. D'Esterre's 
second was Sir Edward Stanley. Mr. D'Esterre 
fired first and missed his mark ; O'ConnelFs bullet 
passed through his opponent's thigh, and the 
wound proved mortal, for he died the next day, 
the 3rd of Februar)^ 1815. Some chroniclers 
relate that while arrangements were being made, 
Mr. D'Esterre threw an orange in the air and hit 
it with his pistol bullet, a proceeding properly 
reprobated by Major Macnamara, who looked 
upon it as a sort of intimidation ; but the story is 
improbable in itself, and lacks all contemporary 
confirmation. Mr. Greville in his valuable 
" Memoirs," however, tells us that when O'Con- 
nell's party were driving back to Dublin they met 
a party of dragoons coming along the road to- 
wards Bishopscourt. They had been sent by the 
authorities, it adds, to protect D'Esterre in the 
event of his killing his adversary, for it was 
assumed that D'Esterre was sure to come off the 
conqueror, and it was feared the country people 
might commit some outrage or assault on the 
overthrower of their idol. 

Lord Whitworth's tenure of the Viceregal 



nuni.iN CASTLF. 207 

office was saddened by a great domestic calamity 
— -the death of his popular young stepson, the 
Duke of Dorset. The latter had been living in 
Ireland for about a year and a half, and went on 
a visit to Powerscourt, whose owner was his 
friend, and had been his schoolfellow. According 
to the "Annual Register," His Grace, accom- 
panied by Lord Powerscourt and Mr. Wingfield, 
joined some harriers who were drawing for a hare 
round Kiiliney. a rough rocky district, full of big 
boulders, where the fields were divided by rough 
stone walls of irregular construction. In a run 
that followed, the Duke jumped a small wall, but 
the marc he was riding landed among some rocks 
and fell, and in the struggle His Grace was badly 
squeezed among the stones, and died an hour 
after the fall, before Surgeons Crampton (after- 
wards the famous Sir Philip) and Macklin, who 
had been summoned to attend by Lord Powers- 
court, could arrive. The event cast a great 
gloom over Dublin, as well as its Court and 
Castle; for the Duke was only 22 at his death. 
A monument of granite (the stone of the pla.:e) 
was raised to his memory on the fatal spot, 
and the following lines, believed to be the 
composition of Baron Smith, were sculptured 
upon it : — 




208 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

When tne Temple of Freedom by Liberty founded 

Was reared by her mandate on Britain's proud shore, 
The ark of her glory our fathers surrounded, 

And enshrined in their bosoms the laws they adore. 
*Twas then from the good, from the brave, were selected 

The nobles of England to pillar the shrine. 
And bright from each column of her fane were reflected 

The rays of truth, honour, and freedom divine ! 
But mourn now, Britannia ! one column of thy glory 

Has fallen in the pride of its beauty and power, 
While weeping Hibemia repeats the sad stor)', 

Responsively wailing the ill-fated hour ! 
Tis not o*er the statesman or conqueror's urn. 

Nor yet for the chief who in battle has bled 
No, 'tis not for these that the muse bids thee mourn — 

Oh, no ! but, alas ! 'tis thy Dorset is dead ! 
For his were endowments to claim admiration, 

High courage, pure honour, nobility, truth ; 
Let the requiem of sorrow resound o*er the nation. 

For Dorset has falKn in the pride of his youth I 
Ah, never did Nature with proud emulation 

A heart with more virtue more honour adorn ; 
And the bright rays of splendour that shone from high 
station 

Were the faintest of beams that illum'd his young morn. 
Too early, alas ! has this bright promise faded, 

Too soon are we called to bewail his sad doom ; 
While his relics with wreaths emblematic are shaded, 

The tears of his country shall fall on his tomb. 
But be hush'd the loud plaint, and still'd the sad numbers 

Awake not the anguish a parent must feel, 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 209 

As she mournfully bends where his cold form slumbers, 

With grief more emphatic than words can reveal ! 
Be hallowed that grief, and be sacred the tear 

That falls from a heart overcharged with woe ; 
Let the soul's warmest sympathy ever revere 

The drops which the heart of a mother overflow. 
May hope's brilliant lustre, dispelling dejection, 

With time's lenient hand every sorrow remove ; 
And this truth cheer the heart of maternal affection, 

Kindred virtues on earth are united above. 

We trust his " law *' was better than his 
poetry. 

The following lines on the same sad theme are 
attributed to Lord Whitworth : — 

Useless are all these trappings of the great 

To him who sleeps in death, nor heeds their state ; 

To him who, lying in yon tower, alone, 

Sees not the mother's tears nor hears the mother's moan ; 

Nor hears those mournful tones that sadly peal 

Like the low murmurs of an evening gale : 

Now straining into louder notes of grief, 

Then soothing soft to give the heart relief. 

These, may be, speak our sorrow. Can an ear, 

Catching at angel choirs, such dull notes hear? 

No ! If a sound can reach him to yon skies, 

'Tis the sad throbbing of a mother's sighs 

That from a sorrowing bosom faintly break, 

Heave her full heart and moisten her wan cheek. 

Bright shone his morning — promising his days 

As Phoebus, glittering in meridian blaze. 



2IO DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Pure was his life, and affable, tho* great, 
When Heav'n, in pity viewing mortal fate. 
Quick as the lightning, by one fatal blow, 
Snatched him in mercy from this vale of woe. 

One of the Duke*s ancestors had been twice 
Viceroy of Ireland ; once in 1831, and the second 
time in 185 1. ** Sackville Street " and ** Dorset 
Street/' in Dublin, are memorials of this Vice- 
royalty ; the former, which has been styled by a 
few patriots O'Connell Street, was originally 
Drogheda Street, called from the Moore family, 
then Earls, now Marquises of Drogheda. Some 
say, however, that it was named Sackville, from 
Sackville Gardiner. Lord Spencer, while hunting 
with the Ward hounds one day, during his second 
tenure of office, had rather a narrow escape of 
being ridden on, and perhaps badly injured, by a 
hard-riding horse-trainer, who probably could not 
control the impetuosity of his young hunter, in 
his eagerness to get over the fence after his pre- 
decessor — or presaltator, " I missed you, my 
Lord," said the penitent pursuer, when apologising 
to his Excellency afterwards, *' by just the black 
of my naiiy 

The following extracts from contemporar\- 
journals illustrate the formal entry of a Lord 
Lieutenant into his dominions in 1773 : — 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



" Yesterday the great guns were sent from the 
Castle, to George's Key. to salute his Grace the 
Duke of Dorset on his landing here, which is 
expected to be Friday or Saturday next." — " Dub- 
lin Evg. Post, Sept. nth, 1733." 

" Yesterday arriv'd here from England, his 
Grace Lionel Cranfield, Duke of Dorset, Lord 
Lieut, and Gen, Gov. of this Kingdom ; his Grace 
has brought over with him, her Grace the 
Dutchess, the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Middlesex, 
the Rt. Hon. Lord John Sackville, two of his 
Sons, and the Rt. Hon. the Lady Carolina his 
only Daughter. They were received about 
3 O'clock at Geoi^e's-key, by their Excellencies 
the Lords Justices, and several of the Lords and 
Nobility, from whence they were conducted by 
the Company of Battle-axes, a Regiment of 
Horse, and the High Sheriffs and Commons of 
this City, on Horseback to the Castle. The 
Rt. Hon, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and 
Recorder, as usual, received them at the upf)er 
End of Lazers-Hill, and deliver'd to his Grace 
the Keys of the City, at which time the Recorder 
made him an excellent Speech. After he arrived 
at the Castle, he went to his Grace the Lord 
Primate's to Dinner. 

" There landed at the same time, the Hon. 



k. 



212 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Col. Ligonier, and George Bub-Doddington, Esq., 
Clerk of the Pells/'— '* Dub. Evg. Post, Sept. 
1 8th, 1733." 

1821, 

Few phenomena are much more remarkable 
in history than the manner in which hybrid 
Hibernians, or Anglo-Irish, have moulded the 
destinies of England, Lord Castlereagh is a 
conspicuous instance of this plastic power, for 
he was, for a time, the man endowed with the 
largest share of political power not only in 
England and the United Kingdom, but also in 
Europe. Canning's meteoric career was cut 
short by a premature death, but perhaps the 
Colley-Wellesley family is the best instance that 
can be adduced of a patrician gens that has made 
itself as inseparable from the warp and woof of 
our insular history as any of the great houses 
that contributed to the supremacy of Rome. 
Like Sir William Petty, the founder of the Lans- 
downe fortune and greatness, the ancestor of the 
Colley family was a Surveyor-General or Land 
Commissioner (to use the phrase in modern 
vogue), and presently we find Sir Henry Colley of 
Castle Carberry, in the co. Kildare, seneschal of 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 213 

the King's County, and an army contractor, a 
circumstance which the Iron Duke perhaps forgot 
when he was so hard upon the contracting race in 
the Peninsula. Of Carberry Castle the gaunt 
ruins still remain, massive in their masonry. We 
hear little of these Colleys. They must have 
had a hard and exciting life on these marches, 
when the borderers were not unlike those of 
whom Sir Walter Scott wrote — 

" Let nobles fight for fame, 

Let vassals follow where they lead. 
But war's the Borderer's game." 

A Miss Elizabeth Colley married Garrett 
Wesley, or Wellesley, of Dangan, co. Meath, 
and on his death sine prole, Richard Colley his 
cousin inherited the Meath property and took the 
name of Wellesley. He sat for the borough of 
Trim, where the statue of his descendant, Arthur 
Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, is very con- 
spicuous. He was raised to the peerage as Baron 
Mornington, and his eldest son subsequently 
became Earl of Mornington. He was a well 
known musical composer, and no less than four 
of his five sons had their names inscribed in the 
Libro D oro of England. ** Our affair" as the 
French idiom goes, however, is with Viscount 



214 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Wellesley, who rose to be Marquis Wellesley* one 
of the most famous Governor-Generals of India, 
" who doubled the revenue and more than doubled 
the dominion of the old East India Company." 
The tide of war carried out to the East his 
brother, Colonel Arthur Wellesley, whose career 
in India, unfortunate in its first essay, is one of 
the most brilliant illustrations of our military 
history. 

Lord Wellesley, an autocrat by nature, 
never quite remembered that his younger 
brother, Arthur, was at least a co-partner in his 
fame, for to the last it is said he treated him 
with the superciliousness engendered by the 
presumed prestige of primogeniture, as w^ell 
as by the consciousness of his own great gifts 
of intellect and beauty of feature if not of form, 
for he could hold his own even with such a 
sublime and scintillating scholar as Canning. 
With such qualifications it will be readily under- 
stood that the Marquis was through life 
" Richard le bien-aim^," but though twice married 
he left no son. As a Viceroy he proved 
rather a brilfiant failure than a shining success. 
** Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute '* was well 
illustrated in his first turn of Viceroyalty, for he 
misconstrued the throwing of a bottle into his 



DUBLIS CASTLE. Slj 

box at the theatre in Dublin into an attempt on 
his life ; and the loss of dignity and prestige was 
the natural consequence of his prosecution 
breaking down, to the joy of the Orangemen, who 
chorussed, " by Eldon " (the Lord Chancellor) 
" 'twas well done." He was again appointed 
Lord Lieutenant in 1833, but though his views 
were liberally statesmanlike, and even conciliatory, 
he failed in conciliation. The autocratic satrapy 
of an Oriental Empire was not a good school 
for a constitutional Viceroyalty. However, Lord 
Wellesley met a famine crisis ably, and maintained 
law and order j in the Peninsula he did good 
service. 

In the brief sketches we have presented of 
Lord Wellesley's government of Ireland as Lord 
Lieutenant, from which so much was anticipated 
that the actual results seemed to contemporaries 
somewhat disappointing, we tried to impress upon 
the reader that the autocratic nature of the man 
had been accentuated and intensified, so to speak, 
by his tenure of power in India for so long a 
period, at a time when the Governor-General of 
our Eastern Empire, untrammelled by the modern 
resources of science- — fast lines of steamers and the 
electric wire — ^was in many respects a more abso- 
lute sovereign than the Grand Monarque himself. 



I 



2l6 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

To descend from such a satrapy to the government 
of an island like Ireland must have appeared like 
undertaking an -/Edileship at Rome after having 
filled a Proconsulship ; a fall from a Grand Vizier- 
ship to a petty Pashalik ; from having to write 
despatches about kings and kingdoms, to a 
chronicle of constitutional small beer, and the 
battles of kites and crows. But Wellesley would 
never fail to magnify his office and make it 
honourable in the eyes of men, as will be evidenced 
by a single fact. He had married en secondes 
noceSy Mrs. Patterson, of Baltimore, so nearly 
related to Jerome Buonaparte. She was a Roman 
Catholic, while he was a Protestant who wor- 
shipped in the Castle chapel, and he always 
insisted on his wife being escorted from the Castle 
or Lodge to and from the Roman Catholic 
Cathedral of Marlborough Street, Dublin, by a 
troop of Dragoons, Lancers, or Hussars, a new 
departure that caused some little excitement at 
the time. 

Lord Wellesley's attempt to remodel whole- 
sale the local magistracy was a grievous error in 
judgment and arrayed much of the gentry against 
him. 

We have alluded to Lord Wellesley as a most 
accomplished scholar ; indeed, it was in scholarship 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 2 I /"^ 

that the great consul and administrator of the 
easternmost and westernmost portions of our 
empire sought and found that solatium senectutisy 
which Talleyrand, according to the tale, attributed 
to Whist, for, when a young friend of the priestly 
diplomat admitted to him his total ignorance 
of, and distate for, the game, he remarked, 
** qu elle triste vieillesse vous vous preparez." 
The " Greville Memoirs ** tell us of the surprise 
felt among the Marquis's friends in England at 
the great vigour he threw into his Irish Govern- 
ment, when his energies were supposed to be 
somewhat sapped by his Oriental experiences ; 
but that vigour of mind was quite exceptional, 
for in his eightieth year we find him dedicating a 
small volume of Latin poems to his friend Lord 
Brougham, another intellectual giant. One of his 
Latin poems may be given in illustration ; the 
subject was a Weeping Willow which overhung 
the banks of the Thames, by which, not unmind- 
ful, perhaps, of ** the schoolboy spot which we 
remember well, though there we are forgot" — 
Eton, to wit, he had selected his residence, Fern- 
side, as a 

" Modus lasso Maris et viarum militiaeque.'* 

This willow had been brought from the 



2l8 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

banks of the Euphrates — the real " waters of 
Babylon." 

Passis moesta comis, fonnosa doloris imago, 

Quae flenti sirailis pendet in amne salix, 
Euphratis nata in ripi Babylone sub alta 

Dicitur Hebreas sustenuisse lyras : 
Cum, terra ignoti, Proles Solymea refugit 

Divinura patriae jussa movere melos : 
Suspensis que lyris, et luctu muta, sedebat, 

In lacrymis memorans, te reverende Sion ! 
Te dilecte Sion ! frustra sacrata Jehovae, 

Te praesenti aedes irradiata Deo ! 
Nunc pede barbarico, et manibus temerata profanis, 

Nunc orbata tuis, et taciturna domus ! 
At tu pulchra salix, Thamesini littoris hospes, 

Sis sacra, et nobis pignora sacra feras ; 
Qua cecidit Judica, mones, captiva sub ira, 

Victricem stravit quae Babylona manus ; 
Inde doces sacra et ritns servare parentum, 

Juraque, et antiqua vi stabilire fidem. 
Me quoties curas suadent lenire seniles 

Umbra tua, et viridi ripa beata toro 
Sit mihi, primitlasque meas, tenuesque triumphos 

Sit revocare tuos dulcis Etona ! dies 
Auspice te summae mirari culmina famae, 

Et purum antiquae lucis adire jubar 
Edidici puer, et jam primo in limine vitae, 

Ingenuas verae laudis amare vices. 
O Juncta Aonidum lauro pra.xepta salutis 

.Eternae ! et musis consociata fides ! 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 219 

Felix doctrina ! divindque insita luce ! 

Quae tuleras anirao lumina fausta meo ; 
Incomipta precor maneas, atque integra, seu te, 

Aura regat populi, seu novitatis amor 
Stet quoque prisca domus (neque enim manus impia 
tangat) 

Floreat in mediis intemerata minis ; 
Det patribus patres, populoque det inclyta cives 

Eloquiumque foro, Judiciisque decus. 
Conciliisque animos, magnaeque det ordine genti 

Immortalem alta cum pietate fidem. 
Floreat, intacta per postera saecula fam^, 

Cura diu patriae, cura paterna Dei. 



1828. 

After Lord Wellesley's departure from Ireland 
for the first time, the Viceregal succession was 
carried on by the Marquis of Anglesey, who was 
of European reputation as a beau sabreur, a man 
of great gallantry and intrepidity, who had done 
the State good service as an infantry as well as 
a cavalry leader, of clear head and fine judgment, 
and a mind rather freer from political prejudice 
than was commonly to be found at that time. 
Lord Anglesey was the Prorex of Ireland twice: 
once in 1828, and then again in 1830, the Duke 
of Northumberland having held office in the 
interval. Lord Anglesey's first term of office 

p 



2 20 DUBLIN CASTLE, 

was comparatively smooth, but in his second he 
had to encounter the whole weight of O'Conneirs 
opposition, said, whether correctly or not, to 
have been envenomed by certain forensic appoint- 
ments, as it was certainly accentuated by the legal 
victories of Mr. Attorney-General Blackburne 
(afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland) over the 
shifty efforts of Mr. O'Connell to circumvent the 
proclamations of the Lord Lieutenant against 
illegal assemblies. For a long time the historical 
individuality of the Viceroy has been eclipsed 
or overshadowed by his Chief Secretary, who 
manages the affairs of the island in the House of 
Commons, and is, therefore, constantly in evi- 
dence and action, while the Viceroy's ofificial. 
existence can only be gauged by reading his 
despatches. That Lord Anglesey, however, took 
the deepest interest in everything relating to his 
Proconsulate, and that his great aim was to 
hold the balance of justice between the warring 
factions, ever struggling for ascendancy, we learn 
from his letters. The tithe war, " bequeathed 
from bleeding sire to son,*' was carried on more 
boldly and audaciously in his reign than ever, and 
the murders, massacres, or victories, from which- 
ever standpoint they are regarded, of Newtown 
Barry, in the co. Wexford, and of Carrickshock. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 221 

in the co. Kilkenny, where a police inspector of 
the name of Gibbons, and a number of con- 
stables on their way to levy a distress for tithes 
due to the Rector of Innistiogue, were led into a 
sort of local Kyber Pass and stoned to death, 
were the precursors of the tithe settlement 
effected by the act of Mr. Stanley, the Chief 
Secretary to Lord Anglesey. The Cap of Main- 
tenance does not enter into the daily costume of 
a Lord Lieutenant, but, I believe, the Anglesey 
Hat was generally esteemed by contemporary 
critics a masterpiece of art and design. 

That his Excellency was a true patriot or 
lover of the land he had ruled is shown by a letter 
which he addressed from Rome to the Attorney- 
General, Blackburne, after his resignation of 
the Lord Lieutenancy. He is dilating on the 
solidity of the works of the Imperial city, which 
appear to have been ** destined for eternity.*' 
** They would have made you a ship canal from 
Gal way to your bay in a month. How a Roman 
Emperor would have smiled at the difficulty of 
forming one from Kingstown to Dublin ! " A 
very wise and prophetic remark is added in this 
letter : ** It is ecclesiastical wealth that will 
destroy Church establishments, and at no distant 
period.'* — Written in 1834. 

p 2 



22 2 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

1829. 

The Duke of Northumberland> who was sand- 
wiched in between the two periods of Lord Angle- 
sey's government, ruled right royally — with a 
magnificent liberality — 6ften, no doubt, deplored 
by less wealthy occupants of the Viceregal throne. 
He handed back ;^io,o6o of his honorarium, 
hitherto ;^3b,ooo per annum, to the Treasury, 
Since then the salary has been ;^2o,ood. 

As something of an illustration of the magni- 
ficent munificence of the Duke of Northumber- 
land's Viceroyalty, it may be mentioned that when 
he was leaving Dublin he sent An invitation to his 
Dublin tradesmen to pay him a visit at his Palace 
there and view the lions of London. The great 
majority accepted his hospitable suggestion, but 
one or two of the old-fashioned ** stick-to-your 
business " sort stayed in Dublin, and when the 
travelled tradesmen returned to Ireland the ** stay- 
at-homes" were very anxious to know all about 
the visit and how they had fared. One more 
outspoken than the others told them that nothing 
could have been better than their reception by 
his Grace, that they had had the best of every- 
thing, and every facility for seeing and enjoying 
*'life in London;" but, he added, ''in spite of all 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 223 

his Grace's liberality^ the visit was a most costly 
afifair, and fqr my own part I could have econo- 
mised at a first-class hotel, so exorbitant were 
the expectations of the Northumberland servants, 
so l^^rge the gratifications given/' It is just 
possible, however, that these gratifications were 
looked on as " commissions " by the household of 
th^ disp^ndipus Duke, 

1835. 

Thje Vrceroyalty of the Earl of Mulgrave, 
afterwai^ds Marquis of Normanby, is viewed in 
very different lights by the extremists on either 
side in Ireland, by whom the temperate via media 
is seldom kept in matters political or polemical, for, 
like George Villiers, they prove — 



" So over violent, or over civil. 
That every man with them is God or devil. 



tt 



To the Protestant ascendancy clique, of whom 
the coryphaeus iii the House of Lords was the 
Earl of Roden, Lord Mulgrave appeared only a 
few degrees less abominable than the apocryphal 
beast. But to the great bulk of the inhabitants of* 
Ireland, who were Liberal, because their hopes 
and expectations were based on Liberal support, 



2 24 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Lord Mulgrave was a right-minded and impartial 
Viceroy, who, while he put a curb on Orange 
violence, was equally unfavourable to secret 
societies — the Ribbon especially — on the other 
side. Hence the country party eschewed the 
levees and functions at the Castle, thereby throw- 
ing his Excellency still more into Catholic hands. 
O'Connell gave him his strenuous support, and for 
that reason probably the country, save for the 
tithe agitation, was restored to some temporary 
tranquillity. The wholesale gaol deliveries autho- 
rised by his Excellency on his progresses through 
the country, gave rise to no slight scandal ; but 
almost anything seemed preferable to ** the bloody 
assizes" so common previously. Lord Mul- 
grave's personal staff, which included Mr. Frank 
Sheridan, Mr. Bernal Osborne> Sir Thomas 
Burke, and men of that calibre, was verj"^ popular, 
and the Viceroy shared in its popularity. His 
Excellency, moreover, like Lord Anglesea, joined 
in the sports and pastimes of the country, par- 
ticularly in racing, and as the Curragh was not 
then made quite so accessible by train as it is 
now from Dublin, the Lord Lieutenant spent 
much of his time at Normanby Lodge at its edge, 
which he either bought or rented for a sporting 
home in summer. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 225 

His Excellency was very fortunate in his 
Secretaries, for the Chief Secretary was Lord 
Morpeth, afterwards Earl of Carlisle, so long 
identified with the Castle and Viceregal Lodge ; 
while the Under-Secretary was Mr. Thomas 
Drummond, decidedly the ablest man, and, per- 
haps, the most earnest and devoted that ever 
filled that post. He may be said to have struck 
the hardest blows that ever were aimed at the 
odious oligarchical system of exclusivism, known 
as ** Protestant Ascendancy," and to have done 
much to enlist the people to the side of govern- 
ment by the administration of unswerving and 
evenhanded justice. Mr. Drummond, who Wc's 
the scion of a Scotch family almost as old as the 
Courtenays in England, began his career in the 
Royal Engineers, and very soon stepped out 
of the crowd by his clever invention of the 
limelight (of which the modern light is only 
an adaptation) for the scientific surveying and 
illumination of the coast. Lord Brougham 
introduced him to the political arena, and Lord 
Althorp persuaded him to become his private 
secretary. This, probably, led to his appoint- 
ment as permanent Under-Secretary to the Lord 
Lieutenant of the time being. Some will say that 
his zeal for a still unenfranchised and half emanci- 



2 26 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

pated peasantry led him too far in the opposite 
direction, but no one ever doubted his philan- 
thropic highmindedness and rectitude of purpose. 
He was married to Miss Kinnaird just before 
settling in the lodge in the Phoenix Park. 
Whatever may be thought of Lord Mulgrave's 
political views, he was not wanting in ability, 
and he had the courage of his convictions. 

Lord Normanby was Governor of Jamaica 
prior to his Viceroyalty, and his son succeeded 
him in that post. 

1846. 

The pestilence which **walketh in darkness'' 
and destroys human beings finds a replica in the 
blight which sometimes in a mysterious and 
sudden manner attacks the food staples of a 
nation, and paralyses its industry. The vine is 
especially subject to such a canker, but then 
the vine, though it may minister greatly to the 
wealth and power of a population, is not its sole 
subsistence and stay, and so to speak its raison 
cTetre; but the potato in Ireland, the gift of an 
English adventurer, fulfilled all these conditions, 
and was practically the life of about four millions 
of men, women, and children. In 1845 the 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



potato plant was struck with consumption, and the 
existence of millions was thus placed in jeopardy. 
Experts tell us that an improvident peasantry had 
brought this Nemesis on themselves by sowing 
bad seed year after year, and never changing 
or renewing it. They tell us, too, that Nature 
had given indications of the approaching decay 
some years previously, which were all unheeded, 
but the revelation of the potato rot, which 
extended all over Ireland, -was as sudden and 
overwhelming as a shock of earthquake or the in- 
road of an overwhelming flood. Malthus* theories 
about the pressure of population, and the increase 
of the latter in a geometrical ratio, while the in- 
crease of the means of subsistence was only on an 
arithmetical scale of proportion, found no favour 
in Ireland, where politics, population, and potatoes 
formed an inseparable Trinity, the multiplication 
of forty-shilling freeholds to increase the political 
power of the landowners being ihe/ons et ori^o of 
this perilous and precarious combination. When 
the emancipated freeholders refused to be driven 
to the poll like sheep, at least by their landlords, 
though they submitted cheerfully to the goad of 
" their natural leaders," secular and spiritual, 
these freeholders, on getting into almost inevitable 
arrear, were evicted freely, to swell the ranks 



k 



2 28 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

of the lazy, listless loafers of the towns, who, 
like the ideal idlers in the market place referred 
to by the Evangelist, maintained that attitude 
because ** no man had hired them." A system of 
cheap emigration had not then been devised, the 
Poor Law had not been introduced, and the 
clearance of a county side was then what it is 
not now, as asserted by Mr. Gladstone and his 
followers, something akin to a ** sentence of death.'* 
Our Indian Empire experiences have taught us 
what it is to have a strong, capable, and humane 
Governor at the helm when a famine is threatened, 
or the industries of a population are suddenly 
arrested and paralysed. Fortunate was it for the 
United Kingdom that the Viceroy of Ireland — 
John William Ponsonby, fourth Earl of Bess- 
borough — was an Irishman of heart and brains, 
who could master the situation and do his best to 
alleviate it, and who, moreover, was acceptable to 
the people he ruled and to their chiefs, while fully 
prepared to maintain the constitution and to 
respect the rights of property and the traditions of 
the Empire. 

A Conservative Ponsonby would be something 
of a *' rara avis'' in politics — that is to say, a 
Conservative by public profession, for in practice 
the family are Conservative enough in many 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 229 

respects, but in the Irish as well as in the English 
Parliaments the Ponsonbys ever proved oppo- 
nents to privilege and strenuous vindicators of 
popular rights. The Prodigal Son is a typical 
picture for all times, but fortunately the Ponsonby 
family had few such erratic, if sublimely repentant, 
members, and it seems to have been characterised 
by prudence, policy, and common sense for 
generations, since the Cromwellian Colonel pru- 
dently purchased up the land debentures in which 
the disbanded Parliamentary army was paid. In 
Church and State, in war, and its image, the 
chase, the Ponsonbys illustrate history and county 
annals. We know from the Greville *' Memoirs" 
that the fourth Earl, while Liberal as any 
hereditary Whig, was as opposed to anarchy and 
lawlessness as — say Mr. Arthur Balfour or his 
uncle Lord Salisbury. ** He wants the Proclam- 
ation Act to be renewed ; the Conciliation Hall 
has its agents everywhere, and governs Ireland 
more than the Government does. If he had been 
Lord Lieutenant he would not have consented to 
divide authority with that body." Here is Charles 
Greville's commentary on Lord Bessborough*s 
reign : — ** In Ireland Bessborough has done 
admirably well, with a mixture of wisdom and 
firmness which has gained him great applause. 



230 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Even Lord Roden says he is the best Lord 
Lieutenant they ever had. The state of Ireland 
meanwhile is mos( deplorable, not so much from 
the magnitude of the prevailing calamity as from 
the utter corruption and demoralisation of the 
whole people from top to bottom. Obstinacy, 
ignorance, cupidity^ and idleness overspread the 
land. Nobody thinks of anything but how they 
can turn the evil of the times to their own 
advantage. The upper classes are intent on 
jobbery, and tlje lp^yer on being provided with 
everything, and doing nothing. It sickens and 
disgusts me, and it is necessary to bear constantly 
in mind how much >ye have to reproach ourselves 
for letting Ireland become so degraded and cor- 
rupt, to endure the spectacle with any sort of 
patience." Again, he writes : — *' There is no 
doubt whatever that >vhile ]English charity and 
commiseration have been so loudly invoked, and 
we have been harrowed with stories of Irish 
starvation, in many parts of Ireland the people 
have been suffered to die for want of food when 
there was all the time plenty of food to give them, 
but which was hoarded on speculation ; but what 
is still more extraordinary, people have died of 
starvation with money enough to buy food in 
their pockets. I was told the night before last 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



231 



that Lord de Vesci had written to his son that 
since the Government had positively declared they 
would not furnish seed, abundance of seed had 
come forth, and, what was more extraordinary, 
plenty of potatoes ; and Labouchere told me there 
had been three coroners' inquests, with verdicts 
' Starvalion,' and in each case the suffer'ers had 
been found to have considerable sums of money 
in their possession ; and in one, if not more, still 
more considerable sums In the savings bank— yet 
they died rather than spend their money in the 
purchase of food." Without questioning these 
eccentricities and hoarding hallucinations, the 
awful nature and extent of the national calamity, 
with the sequent pestilence, cannot be gainsayed. 
The readers of Thucydides know that the com- 
bination of 'Ktfj.o'i and Xoiy-oq lead to strange 
consequences and very moderate manifestations 
of human nature. 

It is something of a coincidence that the 
deaths of Lord Bessborough and O'Connell took 
place almost simultaneously. " The departure of 
the latter, which not long ago would have excited 
the greatest interest, and filled the world with 
political speculations, was heard almost with un- 
concern, so entirety had his importance vanished ; 
he had. in fact, been for some time morally and 



k 



232 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

politically defunct, and nobody seems to know 
whether his death is likely to prove a good or 
an evil, or a mere matter of indifference. The 
death of Bessborough excited far greater interest, 
and no man ever quitted the world more sur- 
rounded by sympathy, approbation, respect, and 
affection than he did — during his last illness, 
which he himself and all about him knew to be 
fatal, he was surrounded by a numerous and 
devoted family, and the people of Dublin univer- 
sally testified their regard foi; him, and their grief 
at losing him. He continued in the uninter- 
rupted possession of his, faculties almost to the 
last hour of his exisj:ence, and h^ calmly discussed 
every matter of public and private interest in 
conversation with his, children and friends, and 
dictated letters to John Russell and his colleagues 
at home. He expired at eleven o'clock at night ; 
at nine he felt his pulse, and said he saw the end 
was approaching. He then sent for all his family, 
seventeen in number, saw them, and took leave 
of them separately, and gave to each a small 
present he had prepared, and then calmly lay 
down to die ; in less than two hours all was over. 
They say his funeral was one of the finest and 
most striking sights possible, from the countless 
multitudes which attended it, and the decorum 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 2^^ 

and good feeling which were displayed. Claren- 
don has kept the whole of Bessborough's staff 
and household, with one exception, and he told 
them that he kept them on account of their 
attachment to his predecessor. The reputation 
which Bessborough had acquired, which, at the 
time of his death, and since his Irish adminis- 
tration, was very considerable, affords a remark- 
able example of the success which may be 
obtained by qualities of a superior description, 
without great talents, without knowledge and 
information, and without any ppwer of speaking 
in Parliament. He had long been addicted to 
politics, and was closely connected by relationship 
or friendship with the most eminent Whig leaders. 
His opinions had always been strongly Liberal, 
and he seemed to have found tbe place exactly 
adapted to his capacity and disposition, when he 
became the Whig whipper-in of the House of 
Commons ; he was gradually initiated in all the 
secrets of that party, and he soon became a 
ver)" important member of it, from his various 
intimacies, and the personal influence he was 
enabled to exercise. He had a remarkably calm 
and unruffled temper, and very good sound sense. 
The consequence was that he was consulted 
by everybody, and usually and constantly em- 



234 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

ployed in the arrangement of difficulties, the 
adjustment of rival pretensions, and the recon- 
ciliation of differences, for which purposes some 
such man is indispensable and invaluable in 
every great political association. He continued to 
acquire fresh weight and influence, and at length 
nothing could be done without Duncannon, as 
he then was ; everybody liked him, and King 
William, when he hated the rest of the Whigs, 
always testified good humour and regard for 
him. He took office and became a Cabinet 
minister, and he continued to do a vast deal 
of Parliamentary business, especially in the 
House of Lords, and carry bills through Par- 
liament without ever making the semblance 
of a speech. In this way, by his good nature 
and good sense, and an extreme liveliness 
and elasticity of spirits, which made him a 
very pleasant and acceptable member of society, 
he continued to increase in public reputation 
and private favour, and when the Govern- 
ment was formed last year his appointment to 
the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland was generally 
approved of He had almost always been on 
good terms with O'Connell ; indeed, he never was 
on bad terms with anybody, and as an Irishman 
he was agreeable to the people. In his adminis- 




tration, adverse and unhappy as the times were, 
he displayed great industry, firmness, and know- 
ledge of the character and circumstances of the 
Irish people, and he conciHated the good will 
of those to whom he had been all his life opposed. 
Lord Roden, the head of the Orange party, who 
has all along acted a very honourable and patriotic 
part, afforded ample testimony to his merits, and 
gave him a very frank and generous support." 

After Lord John Russell had given up his pet 
project of abolishing the Viceroyalty in favour 
of a Secretarj'ship, there was some difficulty in 
selecting a successor, the favourites for the post 
being the Duke of Bedford, Clarendon, and Lord 
Morpeth. Lord Bessborough's request to the 
Premier was "to appoint a -man to succeed him 
luko shall be firm and bold, and, above all, wlw will 
not seek for popularity.'^ These were, indeed, 
counsels of perfection. 

Lord Bessborough's popularity in Ireland was 
the spontaneous offering of all he came in contact 
with, not sought by the usual arts and artifices, 
much less by pandering to popular prejudices and 
passions ; some of it, no doubt, may be accounted 
for by the cordial relations between himself and 
O'Connell, who was occasionally his guest, and by 
his intimacy with that great benefactor of the 



2^6 DUBLIN CASTLE. 



J 



people, Father Mathew ; in fact, Lord Bess- 
borough, in his largeness of view with regard 
to religious toleration, was almost as much in 
advance of his age as his predecessor. Lord 
Chesterfield, who, it is said, warned his Govern- 
ment to be far more afraid oi poverty \n Ireland 
than of Popery, 

Lord Bessborough played Maecenas to several 
Horaces (if not quite of the calibre of the great 
Quintus Flaccus). Fanny Kemble was among 
the invites to the Castle, and among literary 
habitnis at his Court were Moncton Milnes, Mr. 
Abraham Hayward, and Eliot Warburton, w^hose 
*' Crescent and Cross" is still of great and general 
interest. Of course, the social brilliancy of Dublin 
Castle was much eclipsed by the national calamity 
that cast its dark shadow over everything, but for 
all that the Levees and Drawing-Rooms were 
extremely well attended in the time of Lord Bess- 
borough, whose death is .attributed in a great 
measure to official anxiety and care. 

1847. 

Amonjj the vigorous Viceroys of Ireland since 
the Union, the Earl of Clarendon must ever take 
a leading position. He may be said to have been 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 237 

born in the purple of office, and his natural 
acumen was sharpened by the various functions 
which from an early age he was called upon to 
perform. His very title suggests Constitutionalism 
and political liberality, for ** the constitutions of 
Clarendon " are amongst the earliest bulwarks of 
the State against the encroachments and aggres- 
sions of sacerdotalism. They were passed in 
1 164, in a general council of peers and prelates, in 
a park called Clarendon, near Salisbury, and had 
their effect in shaping the destinies of England. 

We are reminded of Dr. Johnson's sonorous 
line — 

** Is now no more than Tully or than Hyde," 

by the decay of the former tenants of the title of 
Earls of Clarendon, to whom, however, the sub- 
ject of our sketch was connected by a maternal" 
ancestress, his own family tracing their lineage 
from the famous Duke of Buckingham. Lord 
Clarendon was educated at Cambridge, and passed 
into the diplomatic ranks after leaving the Univer- 
sity, getting attached to the Embassy at St. Peters- 
burg. From 1823 to 1833 he was a commissioner 
of excise, and in that capacity he was sent to 
Dublin to consolidate the excise boards, though 

Q 2 



238 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

it is hinted in the Cloncurry memoirs that he had 
an even more important mission in preparing for 
the Emancipation Act. A commercial treaty with 
France was his next achievement, and then we 
find he was sent as Envoy Extraordinary and 
Minister Plenipotentiary to Madrid, where he 
acquired a thorough knowledge of Spanish 
affairs, as evidenced by his subsequent speech on 
the subject in the House of Lords. On the 
death of an uncle he succeeded to the Earldom, 
and we next find him in the Melbourne Cabinet as 
Lord Privy Seal, and temporarily Chancellor of 
the Duchy of Lancaster. These offices he held 
till Sir Robert Peel's ministry in 1841 ; when this 
was replaced in 1846 by Lord John Russell's 
administration, Lord Clarendon was given the 
Board of Trade, and on Lord Bessborough's 
death at the Castle (Dublin) he was sent to fill 
the Viceroyalty of Ireland.. The times were 
critical, Chartism was rampant in England, with an 
Irishman, Fergus O'Connor, for its coryphaeus; 
and in Ireland O'Connell, the champion of con- 
stitutional agitation, had been practically deposed 
and degraded by a more advanced party of 
separatists, headed by Smith-O'Brien, Duffy, 
Mitchell, and Meagher, who openly advocated 
violence or the sword as the only means of re- 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 



dressing the wrongs of Ireland. How the bubble 
burst at Ballingarry, without the intervention of a 
single soldier, is now matter of history, too trite to 
repeat ; nor did the sanguinary retaliations that 
followed the Emmett emeute find any place 
consule Clarendon. The chiefs were banished. 
the followers were pardoned, and the anarchical 
scenes which deluged the continent with blood, and 
hurled monarchs from the thrones were unknown 
in Ireland; this happy consummation was due very 
much to the vigilance and boldness of the Viceroy, 
who only struck when it was absolutely necessary 
to do so, and proved himself a most efficient head 
of the Executive, never afraid of assuming re- 
sponsibility when it was absolutely necessary in his 
opinion to act boldly, as in the suppression of 
certain prints whose patriotism tended to treason. 
It was during Lord Clarendon's term of office that 
Her Majesty Queen Victoria paid her first visit to 
Ireland with Prince Albert and the young princes 
and princesses. Their reception was enthusiastic, 
but unfortunately the stay of the royal visitors was 
limited to five days, during which there was a 
grand review of the garrison in the Phcenix Park, 
excursions were made to Howth and Carton, the 
chief institutions of Dublin were visited, and Her 
Majesty and the Prince Consort inscribed their 



I 




240 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

names in the Book of Kells at the Library of 
Trinity College. Lord John Russell, it was well 
known, was strongly opposed to the continuance 
of the Viceroyalty, and Lord Clarendon certainly 
considered himself the last of the tenants of the 
Castle, but a great outcry was made in Dublin 
about the proposed disestablishment, and the 
institution has "brokenly lived on" ever since, 
reminding one of Dryden's line in his poem '* The 
Hind and the Panther" — 



" Still dcx)med to death tho' fated not to die. 



w 



In August, 1849, Her Majesty the Queen 
granted a charter for the foundation of a new 
university, to be called *' the Queen's University 
in Ireland" — of this Lord Clarendon was the 
first chancellor. 

Lord Clarendon's private secretarj- was the 
witty Corry Conellan, whom Thackeray, in his 
satire on the Viceregal office and its satellites, 
described as ** Corry, the bould Conellan." It is 
said that on one occasion the Duke of Devonshire 
paid a visit to the Viceroy at the Castle. Lord 
Clarendon was at the moment of his announce- 
ment absorbed in some affair of State that brooked 
no delay, and he deputed Mr. Conellan to receive 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 24 1 

his Grace till he could get a release from his 
preoccupying business. When this time came 
the Viceroy hurried to meet his Grace, and apolo- 
gised profusely for his apparent neglect. "Pray 
make no apologies," said the Duke, **I have 
been entertained in your absence by a most kind, 
agreeable, and condescending gentleman, who 
made me feel perfectly at home." This was Corry 
Conellan, who, till he eclipsed himself for ever, 
was the ornament and despot of most dinner tables 
in Dublin. In 1825 (March the 2nd) Lord 
Clarendon left his capital on the resignation of 
his chief. Lord John Russell. 

In Lord Clarendon's time the entente cordiale 
which for centuries had existed between the Irish 
or Castle Executive and the head of the Cor- 
poration of Dublin — its Lord Mayor — had not 
been severed by political antagonism ; and the 
Mansion House in Dawson Street, bought in 
1715 from the Dawson family, was a great meet- 
ing place for the leading citizens of Dublin, the 
Lord Lieutenant of the time being, and the 
nobility of the country. On the 21st of January, 
185 1, the then Lord Mayor, Benjamin Lee 
Guinness, entertained his Excellency at a banquet 
of unusual splendour. On the ist of August of 
that year the Midland Great Western Railway of 



242 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Ireland was opened for traffic between Dublin 
and Galway — an event of higher in^portance, 
perhaps, to ** the kingdom of Connaught " than 
any since CromwelFs " Plantation." Whether 
Lord Clarendon was offered the Premiership after 
his departure from Ireland we are unable to state 
positively, but his ability as Secretary of State 
for Foreign Affairs was most conspicuous. The 
gossipy * Charles Greville tells us how, on his 
accepting the Foreign Office in Lord John 
Russell's ministry, Lord Aberdeen told him "that 
of all the new Cabinet, it was to him that the 
Queen and the Prince looked with the greatest 
confidence ; they cared little for any of the others, 
but had a great opinion of him, and a great 
reliance on him, and mainly counted on his judg- 
ment and influence to make matters go on 
smoothly abroad. He said that Peel entertained 
the same opinion, and had said that Clarendon in 
the Cabinet was the best security for peace." It 
may be mentioned here that when Lord John 
Russell conceived that the death of Lord Bess- 
borough gave him an opportunity of bringing in 
a bill for the abolition of the Viceroyalty and 
putting the government of Ireland into the hands 
of a Secretary, it was his intention to offer that 
Secretaryship to Lord Clarendon. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 243 

The Earl of Eglinton 1852 and 1858. 

'* Pour bien vivre," according to the Gallic 
proverb, which may bear the hall mark of Roch- 
foucauld or La Rfuyere, or some such witty 
worthy, ** il faut avoir mauvais coeur et bon 
estomac." There is a certain sardonic verity 
in the antithesis, however abhorrent to our 
better feelings, but we may lay down a cognate 
axiom, or law of life, for Viceroys in Ireland, that 
*'pour bien vivre il faut avoir bon chef, et bon cru," 
and withal a largeness of hand and heart that 
are generally irresistible in the Green Isle. All 
these admirable qualifications were united in the 
handsome person of Archibald William, Earl of 
Eglinton and Winton, Knight of the Thistle, a 
Doctor of Civil Law, and an LL.D. Of his 
orthodoxy in jurisprudence much proof was never 
given or required by the world, so that the LL.D. 
may not be greatly insisted on in marshalling the 
titles and honours of this popular peer ; but the 
possession of L.S.D. is, even in the Chesterfield 
code, no bad letter of recommendation when 
coupled with good looks, winning manners, a 
chivalrous spirit, and a ready wit. Ireland has a 
wonderful power of recuperation. Even in the 
Elizabethan age, after the scourgings and hostings 



244 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

of Strong representatives of the Crown^ when, 
according to contemporary chronicle, the low of 
kine was not to be heard throughout the land for 
many scores of miles, say from Cashel to Cork ; 
when wolves multiplied and waxed more and 
more audacious, as man their master began to 
wane, and the common kerne were fain to satisfy 
the cravings of hunger with such messes of 
pottage as the wild sorrel which the woods 
afforded, a few years of rest and respite sufficed 
to renew the face of the earth ; and now, in the 
second half of the 19th century, the potato- 
plague, the famine,, and the pestilence and 
the financial disorganisation that followed, were 
being fast forgotten in returning plenty and 
prosperity, and society having supped full of 
horrors was fain once more to eat, drink, and be 
merry, and to look hopefully towards a better and 
brighter future. It was at such a time that Lord 
Eglinton was selected for the Viceregal throne in 
the Castle of Dublin by a Conservative premier, 
and Lord Naas, M.P. for Kildare, Coleraine, and 
Cockermouth in succession, was his Chief Secre- 
tary, while General Dunne, of an old Celtic stock, 
was the Permanent Secretary. Lord Eglinton came 
to govern a people for whom chivalry had not yet 
lost its charm, and in whom the passion for sport 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 245 

IS predominant. Horsemen by nature, and bred 
up among horses, the Irish could not but feel a 
leaning towards a nobleman who owned the best 
horse of the century (so far), the Flying Dutch- 
man, who had defeated another great rival, the 
champion of the north, " Voltigeur,*' and who had 
summoned his brother peers and paladins to a 
splendid tournament at Eglinton Castle, where one 
of the chief jousters was an Earl from Erin, another 
a Milesian Marquis, Henry Lord Waterford ; 
and the Queen of Beauty represented Irish wit 
and Irish loveliness, while he himself wore a 
cuirass inlaid with gold. Moreover, Lord Eglin- 
ton was indirectly connected with Ireland. At 
Killester, on the road to Howth, about a mile from 
Clontarf, was an Irish country house, not unlike a 
French chateau, where w^ere reared two comely 
Irish maidens, the daughters of Lord Newcomen, 
whose town house, just opposite the upper gate 
of Dublin Castle, shows that architecture flourished 
in Ireland at that period. One of these ladies 
married Archdeacon Gould ; the second, Theresa, 
after an Indian experience as the wife of Captain 
Cockerell, R.N., became the wife of Lord 
Eglinton. It is said that when Charles Kean, 
the great son of the greater Edmund Kean, 
came to Dublin, then as always a favorite his- 



246 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

trionic hunting ground, he became devoted to 
Miss Theresa Newcomen, but her brother, a 
Captain Newcomen, gave the actor his conge in a 
rather summary fashion. Theresa seems to have 
liked her Charles, for 18 months after> she sent 
him a message to York to say she was going out 
to India malgri. He instantly left the stage where 
he was actually playing, and got leave to see his 
enchantress for ten minutes, and tried to persuade 
her not to sail, ** But my trunks are all on board," 
she piteously pleaded. ** Never mind, don't go ; " 
love laughs at locks we know, but trunks and 
locks prevailed in this case, and on the passage out 
she met Captain Cockerell, " her fate," and he 
became her mate. On his death she became a 
wealthy widow, and in time won and wore, though 
for a short time only, the coronets of Eglinton 
and Winton. Lord Eglinton married cji secondes 
noces Lady Adela Caroline Harriet Capel at 
Dublin Castle. 

Lord Eglinton's transition from the world of 
sport to that of politics was nearly as sudden 
as that of Lord George Bentinck, and if Lord 
Eglinton never attained the heights reached by 
the owner of Crucifix and Surplice, the terror of 
the turf, and the iconoclast of its brigands and 
ruffians, he developed into a graceful speaker 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 247 

and an oratorical ornament of the gilded chamber. 
** Happy the country that has no annals," said a 
well-known writer ; and the history of Ireland 
during the Eglinton regime, repeated as it was, 
proved comparatively uneventful, and may be 
summed up, in the language of Scripture, " The 
land had rest/* It was his privilege to lay the 
first pillar of the exhibition of industrial art in 
the Leinster lawn of the Royal Dublin Society, 
and he lent his willing aid to the projects of Mr. 
Lever for establishing a regular line of Trans- 
Atlantic steamers between Galway and her nearest 
western neighbour, New York. 

But it was socially that Lord Eglintpn shone 
most brilliantly. It was in his day that the big 
banquets that have ever since obtained at the 
Castle were inaugurated,^ and that champagne 
was discovered to be a capital solvent of political 
and polemical acerbities. It flowed most freely 
under his auspices, and all sorts and conditions of 
men ate, drank, and were merry, which is, at any 
rate, a better and a more hopeful state of things 
than everlasting brooding over an impossible 
past, or plotting for a more impossible future. 
I n fact, the order of the day was — 

" Dona praesentis cape laetus horae, et 
Linque severa." 



248 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

His Excellency's skill as a cueist (in which 
he was almost unrivalled) was well and widely 
known, but at racquets he was almost equally 
good, and this manly game found great encourage- 
ment in his reign, and became quite the fashion. 
One of the living ornaments and buttresses of the 
Irish Bench is said to have owed something of 
his precocious promotion to great skill and science 
in the racquet court, where his tall figure was 
almost as familiar as in that of Themis. He 
failed, however, to win the beautiful pin, in which 
a big pearl represented the ball, given by his 
Excellency as a prize in a racquet tournament ; 
it was won by Mr. Alexander, of Carlow, who 
belonged to a family always prominent in manly 
sports of every kind. 

On the resignation of Lord Derby's ministry. 
Lord Eglinton, to the great regret of most Irish- 
men who had ever come in contact with him, 
left Dublin Castle for the second time. This was 
in June. In August we find the Lord Mayor 
of Dublin calling a meeting of citizens at the 
Mansion House to pay a tribute of respect to 
the memory of a Viceroyalty conspicuous for its 
efforts to advance the material interests of Ireland. 

The idea took concrete form in the statue 
erected in Stephens Green, which, however, 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 249 

does scant justice to the manly beauty of Lord 
Eglinton, for, like Tom Bowling s — 

" His form was of the manliest beauty, 
His heart was kind and soft, 
Faithful below he did his duty, 
But now he's gone aloft." 

1853. 

Lord Eglinton's first successor was Lord St. 
Germans, the lineal descendant of the great 
confessor for liberty. Sir John Eliot. He, as 
Lord Elliot, had been Chief Secretary in Ireland, 
and had shown good aptitude for official business, 
having first proved himself in Spain a most able 
diplomatist ; but the business side of Viceroyalty 
is, perhaps, the smallest, and Lord St. Germans, 
with somewhat slender means, was not capable of 
sustaining that splendid style that had charac- 
terised the reign of his predecessor. 

** Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat 
Res augusta domi ; Eblana durius illis 
Conatus." 

For at Eblana, as well as at Imperial Rome, the 
style makes the man (le style fait fhomme), and 
a poor prorex is something rather anomalous! 
His Excellency had the honour of entertaining 
Her Majesty when she came over to visit the 



250 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Industrial Exhibition with the Prince Consort 
and the Prince of Wales. This exhibition was 
mainly the work of Mr. Dargan, the railway con- 
tractor; and another great work of his was the 
Dublin and Wicklow Railway, which in the reign 
of his Excellency was thrown open as far as 
Bray. In his Excellency's reign, too, was opened 
the Roman Catholic University in Stephens 
Green, involving in its title two inconsistencies, 
for ** the Catholic " must havQ a wider sphere 
than Rome, while a University implies admittance 
to the. general, rather than the particular. 

1855. 

Lord Carlisle, who as Viscount Morpeth had 
filled the office of Chief Secretary to the Lord 
Lieutenant under Lords Normaaby, Fortescue, 
and de Grey, renewed his acquaintance with 
Ireland and the Irish as Lord Lieutenant, on 
the resignation of Lord St. Germans in 1855. 
Now Lord Morpeth had been an avowedly 
able Chief Secretary ; his despatches were those 
of a thorough scholar and gentleman, as well as 
of a man of large and liberal views ; but it does 
not follow that a first-rate Secretary should always 
develop into a first-rate Viceroy. The men of 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 25 I 

Corinth complained that while St. Paul's letters 
were ** weighty and powerful his bodily presence 
was weak," and the lack of power and dignity was 
possibly the one thing which prevented Lord 
Carlisle from being a model prorex or pro-consul, 
for he had great gifts, ample fortune, an un- 
impeachable pedigree, and a most kindly and 
genial disposition, combined with a power of 
happy expression that almost amounted at timL^s 
to classical eloquence ; indeed. Lord Carlisle, 
whose nature it was to be happy and to confer 
happiness on others, was perhaps happiest when 
he was pointing periods and making felicitous 
allusions in his ornate orations, whether the 
occasion was the opening of a monster ware- 
house in Grafton or Sackville Street, or laying 
the foundation stone of the new College of 
Physicians. Lord Carlisle, too, was as hos- 
pitable as the typical Prelate as sketched by 
the Apostle to the Gentiles, and if the majority 
of his guests did not belong to the territorial 
aristocracy, whose supremacy in Church and 
State was contrary to all his notions, there 
was a tolerable blend of men and women of 
all creeds and conditions at the Castle and the 
Lodge. Every reign has been illustrated by 
** the might, the majesty of loveliness " in some 

R 



252 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

elected Queen of Beauty. Thus in the days of 
Lord Chesterfield the universal toast was Miss 
Ambrose, ** the dangerous Papist," who after- 
wards became Lady Palmer. Walpole has told 
us of the remarkable trio of girls, the graceful 
Gunnings, who were " Countessed and double 
Duchessed." They were born at Castle Coote, 
and became successively Duchesses of Hamilton 
and Argyll, Countess of Coventry, and Mrs. 
Travers ; but beauty, grace, and that indes- 
cribable fascination which we call ** charm" 
were united at the Carlisle Court in Miss Rose 
O'Hara, who afterwards became Mrs. Forbes, of 
Callender, N.B. 

In Lord Carlisle's Viceroyalty the Queen and 
the Prince Consort paid one of their angelic visits 
to Ireland. Her Majesty reviewed the troops at 
the Curragh, where H.R. H. the Prince of Wales 
had been quartered for a few months, and. after a 
short survey of Killarney, where the royal party 
were entertained by Mr. Herbert, of Muckross, 
and Lord Castlerosse, returned to England vm 
Dublin. 

Lord Carlisle's affectionate disposition was 
shown by the liberal legacies he bequeathed in his 
will to several of the members of his personal staff. 
He shares with Lord Eglington the posthumous 



DUBLIN CASTLE, 253 

honour of a statue in the grounds of "the 
People's Park," part of the Phcenix Park. Lord 
Carlisle had great faith in the reformatory system 
which was carried out on an extensive scale in the 
vicinity of Dublin by Sir John Lentaigne. Sir 
John used to promote some of the "radically 
reformed " to domestic service in his own house, 
and when a wise and witty but agnostic official 
ventured to point out to the philanthropic 
reformer that it was hardly safe to entrust plate 
to such hands. Sir John indignantly asked, 
** Why not, when I can thoroughly trust them." 
" Because," was the reply, " you and his Excel- 
lency will very soon be the sole spoons left in 
the house." Lord Carlisle talked poetically and 
wrote verses, but he was no poet any more than 
Cicero, who claimed the double crown of poet and 
orator. 

To show how urgent Lord Carlisle was in the 
cause of his many friends, the following letter to 
him from Lord Palmerston will serve for an 
example : — 

" Broadlands, 

'' April 2(), 1862. 
"My dear Carlisle, 

" I have received your letter of the 19th. I 
remember a sarcastic critic exclaiming, * Here 

R 2 



254 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

comes Dudley Stuart with his eternal Poles/ 
I shall parody the exclamation by saying, * Here 

comes Carlisle with his eternal X ; ' but I 

think the Poles better entitled to their freedom 
than X. is to the Commandership, and so let us 
adjourn the debate. 

** Yours sincerely, 

** Palmerston." 

1864. 

To the genial and generous Carlisle succeeded 
a man made of somewhat sterner stuff, John 
Wodehouse, third Baron Wodehouse, who at- 
tained to the Earldom of Kimberley in 1866. 
Comparatively small socially (for his fortune was 
unequal to the task of entertaining magnificently, 
and on a sumptuous scale, like some of his pre- 
decessors in office), he was great administratively, 
and proved a Viceroy of transcendant vigour 
where strength of purpose and determination 
were required for the safety of the State, seeing 
that many thousands of American Irish — desceuvres 
since the enforced reunion of Columbia's pro- 
vinces and '' territories " — were banded together 
to dismember the Empire of England, though 
they had in most cases shed their blood freely for 
the consolidation of America. These men had 



DUBI.IS CASTLE. 



255 



the advantage of numbers and military training, 
whether under -Grant, Le:e, or Jackson, and the 
friction between America and her Motherland, 
on account of the Alabama adventures, was 
availed of on the principle, first, I believe, enun- 
ciated by Grattan, "that England's difficuhy or 
danger was Ireland's opportunity." Of course 
they had the support and sympathy of the 
thousands in I reland whose chief creed was, 
" Anglia delenda est" — England must be blotted 
out — the same men who later on cheered for 
the Mahdi, and "hosannah'd" for Arabi. And 
so a dangerous conspiracy, in which it was hoped 
and believed some of our soldiers would join, was 
being hatched in Ireland and America simul- 
taneously by men of action as well as by men of 
thoughts and ideas. Canada and Ireland were 
to be the prizes of victory. The standard of 
rebellion was unfurled on a cold night of March 
by the Fenian Executive on Tallaght Hill, a spur 
of the larger Dublin range that with the VVicklow 
mountains forms a long chain in which the 
O'Tooles and O'Byrnes found bases of operations 
and natural fastnesses in their long war with the 
English garrison in Dublin. A more foolhardy 
proceeding could hardly be conceived, unless 
indeed, as in the case of Hoche, strong supports, 



I 




256 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

which were not forthcoming, had been promised 
and counted on. The police of the district were 
strong enough to cope with the outburst, for 
Lord Strathnairn and his staff represented the 
Cavalry of Great Britain on the occasion. The 
Fenian bubble burst when pricked ever so gently, 
and, as in the case of the Spanish Armada, when 
the storms in their courses fought against the 
invaders, "afflavit Deus et dissipantur." The 
spring snows and the want of necessaries extin- 
guished the rising more effectually than arms of 
precision and gunpowder. Consul Kimberley 
was not decreed a triumph, but there was no 
doubt he had shown much promptness and 
decision, especially when he ordered the offices 
of '* The People," an incendiary publication, to be 
entered and the plant of the paper seized forcibly. 
Next day a couple of commissariat wagons carted 
it off to some military store in Dublin. 

Like his predecessor in office, Lord Kim- 
berley was a fine scholar, and won distinction at 
Oxford, where his '* First " was generally held 
to be a brilliant one, for, as everyone knows, 
there are firsts and firsts. It was in Lord 
Kimberley's '* reign" that H.R.H. the Prince of 
Wales paid his first visit to the races of Punches- 
town — ever since then known as Princely 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 257 

Punchestown. From that time the annual Vice- 
regal procession to these peerless plains, or 
rather undulations, has been de rigueur. Most 
Viceroys consider this portion of their duties 
among the pleasantest. 

1866, 

On the fall of the Russell Administration, 
tripped up by that talented tactician Mr. Benjamin 
D'Israeli, the Marquis of Abercorn came to the 
Castle of Dublin as Lord Lieutenant. If Her 
Majestys Constitutional advisers had ransacked 
the realm they could hardly have found a subject 
better qualified to represent his Sovereign than 
James Hamilton, who subsequently became the first 
Duke of Abercorn. He had this advantage over 
many Viceroys before him and after him, namely, 
that he "WdiS ^ persona grata at Court, and honoured 
by the personal friendship of the Queen. An Irish 
nobleman, with a pedigree and quarterings that 
even the hierarchy of the Hofburgh at Vienna, 
who are apt to scoff at our bourgeois barons and 
parvenu peerage, must have respected, and an 
estate of very large acreage in Ulster (nearly 50,000 
in Tyrone alone) ; he had great gifts of mind and 
body, one of the pleasantest and kindliest pre- 
sences in the House of Lords or the Queens 



258 DUBLIN CASTI.E. 

Drawing- Room, together with a happy art of 
expressing agreeably the ideas and conceptions 
of a busy brain. Of him in his early manhood it 
might be said — 

" Quid voveat dulci majus nutricula alumno 
Quam qui scit fari recte quae sentiat, et cui 
Gratia, fama, valetudo, conlingat abunde." 

Lord Abercorn imbibed the atmosphere of 
Courts early, for we find him filling the official 
position of Groom of the Stole to the Prince 
Consort ; but most of his time was spent at his 
beautiful family place, Baronscourt, in the co. 
Tyrone, fulfilling the duties of a country gentle- 
man and magistrate, being Custos Rotulorum for 

the neighbouring county of Donegal. The Duke 

■ 

(though we are anticipating his higher title) was 
not a gambler or the owner of a stud of race- 
horses, but he patronised with a liberal hand all 
country sports, and the shooting parties at 
Baronscourt were not only looked forward to 
as capital sources of sport but as opening the 
portals to the pleasantest country-house society, 
where the sister arts of dancing, singing, and the 

drama flourished greatly. ** What has Lord 

ever done.'*" said a cynic one day to a friend of 
the noble Lord. ** I don't know what he's done,'* 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 259 

was the reply, ** but I know he's the father of the 
most charming girls of our time." This might 
have been said truly in the present case ; indeed, 
few fathers or mothers ever had more reason to 
be proud of their progeny, both men and women, 
and here we may mention that the Duchess, 
a daughter of John, sixth Duke of Bedford, was 
a member of the Royal Order of Victoria and 
Albert, a distinction that speaks for itself. 

The Duke made his entry into disturbed 
Dublin on the 20th of July, and took up his 
quarters at the Viceregal Lodge. Lord Kim- 
berley had boldly grasped the nettle conspiracy 
in Ireland, and nearly crushed it as a national 
effort. There were, however, a few hot-headed, 
foolish Fenians who, unable to calculate the pro- 
portion of means to an end, resolved to strike a 
blow for Ireland, and this they did at Tallaght Hill 
on the 5th of March, a fact we noticed in sketch- 
ing Lord Kimberley's Viceroyalty. The police 
dealt with the belligerents. Lord Strathnairn, who 
had had some experience of rebellions, dealt, it is 
said, with the prisoners by ordering their brace 
buttons to be cut off on the spot, so that they 
were marched into Dublin without handcuffs, but 
all fully occupied in the difficult task of preserving 
personal dignity and decency by having to hold 



26o DUBLIN CASTLE. 

up their trowsers as they marched along ; thus 
the dangers incurred by a possible rescue en rouie 
were minimised. 

In this ** reign " a great work, the foundations 
of which were laid by Sir John Gray, was com- 
pleted on the introduction into Dublin of the 
Vartry water ; but the most splendidly successful 
social pageant was the installation of the Prince 
of Wales, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, as a Knight 
of St. Patrick, in the presence of the Princess of 
Wales, Prince Edward of Saxe Weimar, the 
Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Teck, and a 
cloud of coronets. 

Sir Bernard Burke, who has so happily illus- 
trated the Court life of the Castle, must be heard 
on the subject — '' Ireland welcomed with acclaim 
the Royal Prince, who makes himself loved 
wherever he goes, and Ireland accepted as a 
special compliment his enrolment in her own 
Order of St. Patrick. The presence, too, of the 
youthful Princess of Wales in all the pride of her 
early beauty, ' glittering like the morning star, full 
of life and splendour and joy,' gave a peculiar 
charm to the event, and the popularity of the 
Lord Lieutenant, then Marquis of Abercorn, did 
not detract from the general excitement. The 
knightly pageant brought all contending parties — 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 26 1 

Celt and Saxon, Protestant and Catholic — into 
one mighty and friendly assemblage, and for one 
day, at all events. Irishmen, united by the 
patriotic and harmonious spirit of chivalry, cast 
every bitter remembrance away/' A well known 
and accomplished writer, Percy Fitzgerald, catch- 
ing the spirit of the scene, wrote with graphic 
pen a sparkling description of it, and concluded 
with these words, " Every knight passes to his 
stall ; in front of him stand his two esquires ; 
over his head his own banner and sword. Then 
the new knight is brought to the Grand Master 
and kneels before him while the sword is girded 
on, and the blue collar and robe are adjusted ; 
other blue mantles cluster round, and archbishops 
read the mystic forms. The most picturesque 
moment is when the esquire stands in the middle 
and unfurls the knight's gaudy banner, swinging 
it in defiance, and the trumpets twang out a 
cheerful blast, and Ulster, coming to the front, 
proclaims the style and titles of the most puissant 
knight. Then it begins to pass away. 

*• The tall knights and their esquires, the little 
blue pages, supplemented by more to bear up 
the new knight's train ; the dignified Grand 
Master, the three brilliant ladies in snowy white 
(the Ladies Hamilton), the pale lady in blue 



262 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

(H.R.H. the Princess of Wales), who is most 
interested, vanish in succession. It seems like a 
soft dream, and we are sorry the spell has been 
broken. It looks like going back to mediaeval 
times, and with so much poetry going out of the 
world, it was pleasant to have such a relic left : 
even a doctrinaire would have been moved. It 
may have disturbed the grim ghost of the great 
dead Dean, but to the crowd, Celtic and perfervid, 
it was deeply and poetically interesting/' 

In the evening his Excellency gave a grand 
installation banquet in St. Patrick s Hall, at which 
were seen, besides the Prince and Princess of 
Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, almost all 
the Knights of St. Patrick, the Earl of Shrews- 
bury, who, as Great Seneschal of Ireland, had 
precedence next to royalty ; the principal nobility 
of the country, and Sir Benjamin Guinness, the 
munificent restorer of St. Patrick's Cathedral. In 
December, 1868, on the fall of Mr. D' Israeli's 
ministry, Lord Abercorn was succeeded by Lord 
Spencer. In 1872 the Duke of Abercorn returned 
to the Castle, but resigned in 1876. Dublin 
never knew a more splendid Court than that of 
the Duke and Duchess of Abercorn. The capital 
filled, for the gentry of the country took houses 
there as in the old times of a College Green 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 263 

Parliament, and a great impetus was given to 
local trade ; but it was the Duke's special glory 
to have laid the foundation of Ireland's splendid 
successes at Wimbledon, and to have assisted in 
transferring the Elcho Shield so often to Ireland. 

1868. 

With the turn of the tide political in favour 
of Mr. Gladstone, the Right Hon. John Poyntz 
Spencer, K.G., who had succeeded to the Earldom 
of Spencer on the death of the fourth Earl, came 
to the Castle as Lord Lieutenant, with all the 
prestige that large territorial possessions ( 1 7,000 
acres in Northamptonshire alone), the high 
estimation of his uncle as a statesman and 
politician, and some personal prowess in the 
hunting field gained while Master of the Pytchley 
Hunt, one of the crackest packs and crackest 
countries in England, can confer. Added to this, 
he brought to the Viceregal throne a wife whose 
high- caste beauty and grace caused her to be 
styled by the wits of Dublin ** Spencer's Faery 
Queen," and who rivalled, if she did not actually 
eclipse, the loveliness of her connection by 
marriage, and predecessor at Dublin Castle — the 
Duchess of Tyrconnel, Count de Grammont's 
"la belle Jennings," sister to Sarah, Duchess of 



264 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Marlborough. All these advantages, coupled 
with magnificent plate, which was kept constantly 
bright by use, for his Excellency held that — 

" Nullus argento color est avaris 
Abdito terris, nisi temperato 

Splendeat usu," 

and a staff of sterling sportsmen made Lord 
Spencer a most popular Viceroy at starting, while 
every month of his reign increased his favour with 
his subjects, gentle and simple ; for his Lordship, 
while neglecting none of the details and minutiae 
of his office, which he determined to master 
thoroughly, found time to join in the sports of the 
country, to pay visits to country houses, and to 
make several hunting progresses through his terri- 
tory, acquiring a better insight into its wants and 
capabilities than if he had remained in Dublin and 
been satisfied with the reports of his subordinates. 
In this way Lord Spencer was very often a con- 
spicuous figure with the Meath, Louth, Kildare, 
Queen's County, Carlow, Curraghmore, Ward 
Union, and Kilkenny packs, while Mr. Burton 
Persse, of Moyode Castle, gave him some good 
gallops with '* the Blazers,'' whom Lever has 
immortalised. Lord Spencer was well mounted 
and had a fine eye for country and the runs 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 265 

of foxes, if not quite in the first class of- cross- 
country Centaurs. In fact, Lord Spencer did 
much to raise the fame of the chase as con- 
ducted in Ireland all over the world, and it was 
mainly through his Excellency's representations 
and glowing eulogies that the Kaiserin of 
Austria came from Vienna to enjoy such sport 
as Ireland afforded, and which with a long and 
varied experience Her Majesty pronounced 
unapproachable in any part of the world. 
Lord Spencer, moreover, was not unfrequently 
accompanied in the field by Major Whyte- 
Melville, the poet of pursuit, who wrote several 
of his best known songs on Irish themes, and 
introduced Irish men, women, and horses into his 
fascinating novels. His Excellency, too, did his 
best to improve the breed of horses in Ireland 
by introducing a sire or two of promise and 
performance, while the Castle and the Viceregal 
Lodge were social centres, distinguished by a 
splendid hospitality. In his first reign the Castle 
was honoured by a visit from the Prince of 
Wales, the Princess Louise, the Marquess of 
Lome, and Prince Arthur. The Dublin Exhi- 
bition of Arts, Industries, and Manufactures, 
originated by the Guinness family, ^vas opened. 
New docks for Dublin were made, and the Gaiety 



266 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Theatre took the place of the Theatre Royal, 
which had perished by fire, as so many theatres 
have perished. In 1874 Lord Spencer left the 
Castle on the fall of the Gladstone Ministry. 

1874. 

On the resignation of the Duke of Abercom, 
John Winston Spencer Churchill, Duke of Marl- 
borough, was sent to the Castle. As his name 
suggests, he was rather closely related to Lord 
Spencer, though his hereditary politics (for 
politics are often an heirloom in a family with 
religions, pictures, and statues), reminding one of 
the couplet — 

" And iTi another would as kindly go 
Had but his nurse or mother told him to," 

were different in title, at any rate. His Grace of 
Marlborough was a man of earnest religious 
enquiry and thought, determined to do his duty 
impartially ; but lie had somewhat passed the 
meridian of active official life, and with such men 
the phrase '* quieta non movere " becomes some- 
thing of a cult — often a wise and sensible one» 
and his Grace was wise and sensible. He was 
not a sportsman, save in the matter of salmon 
fishing, of which he was as fond as John Bright, 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 267 

and to get scope for this pastime, he took Black- 
castle-on-the-Boyne, as did Lord Spencer before 
him ; but if he was no foxhunter, his son, Lord 
Randolph Churchill, who was his private secre- 
tary, was extremely fond of this national pastime, 
as was his accomplished wife, and his sister, the 
present Lady Curzon, who found nothing insur- 
mountable in the severest lines of Meath and 
Dublin. The Duchess of Marlborough, a woman 
of talent and energy, played the role of Vice-Queen 
right royally, and patronised in every possible way 
the industries and arts of Ireland, showing, too, 
how strong she could be in the cause of humanity 
by the splendid service she did to the congested 
and famine-menaced districts of Connaught. In 
the Duke's reign Moore's centenary was cele- 
brated with great pomp and pageantry as that of 
the national poet. Byron says something very- 
strong and pithy as to the consequences of 
Platonism **toall posterity." "Mooreism" is pro- 
bably responsible for much rebellion and revolt 
in Ireland. The poet had no idea of kindling 
anything of the sort, and his patriotism was of 
that lukewarm order that led him to settle in 
England, and maintain that Ireland was a very 
good country **to live out of." The Duke of 
Marlborough did not care much latterly for the 

s 



268 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Viceregal Lodge, and leased the lovely Knock- 
drin, the property of the Levinge family, near the 
midland town of Mullingar, as a summer and 
autumnal residence — a rhododendron retreat, for 
in few places on this side of the Himalayas are 
rhododendrons more magnificently luxuriant than 
there. It may be worth while here to relate a 
personal experience which illustrates to some 
extent the former condition of things in Ireland, 
and shows what a germ of truth there was in 
Mr. Forsters assignment of the greater part of 
the crime and outrages of the country to "village 
tyrants." Many years ago I was staying at a 
country house close to Knockdrin, and left it for 
a day or two to pay a visit in another part of the 
countr)^ On my return 1 found that a barbarous 
murder had been committed close to the lodge 
gates of both places. The victim w^as a bailiff, or 
something of the sort, and what struck me more 
than anything else was the matter-of-fact way in 
which the bloody deed was spoken about and 
commented on in the neighbourhood. It really 
seemed to be a mere incident in every-day life. 
I believe the murderers, though well known in the 
county, were never brought to the bar of justice ; 
but as murder and intimidation grew pretty rife 
in the county, an Act giving the police further 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 269 

powers was passed. The gang of village ruffians 
disappeared from the county, and the Knockdrin 
neighbourhood has remained ever since as 
peaceable and well disposed to law and order as 
any portion of Kent or Middlesex — "only more 
so/' to quote a forcible bit of current slang. 

1880. 

The re-appearance of a Liberal Administration 
introduced Lord Cowper as Lord Lieutenant and 
Mr. Forster as his Chief Secretary, with Cabinet 
rank. Lord Cowper was a fair and fearless 
Prorex : he, like the Duke of Abercorn before 
him, showed no dread of the people, and mingled 
in crowds without police protection. It is a 
fact, I believe, that conspirators of an advanced 
pattern actually took a house that commanded 
the avenues to the Castle, and close to where 
Lord Kilwarden was done to death in the Emmett 
" rising," with the intention of shooting him — but 
no shot was fired. Lord Cowper supported his 
nominal subordinate most loyally in his efforts to 
restrain outrage and enforce law, but neither 
were supported by their chiefs in London, and, in 

1882, 

on their resignations, Lord Spencer and Lord 

s 2 



270 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Frederick Cavendish took their places. The 
awful events of the 6th of May will long be 
recollected in Ireland, while in England the Com- 
mission Court has lately revived the ghastly 
memory. From an intended conciliator, Lord 
Spencer had the rtle of coercionist forced upon 
him. Mr. Campbell-Bannerman was his coad- 
jutor in the Secretariat, and, after ** the Invin- 
cibles '' had terrorised Dublin for some time, one 
or two apparently trifling clues were gained as 
to the conspiracy and its members, and justice 
was done on the gang. 

To commence a Government under such awful 
auspices was a severe ordeal ; but Lord Spencer 
was equal to the occasion, and strengthened by 
the counsel and ability of his Lord Chancellor, 
Sir Edward Sullivan, and backed by the spon- 
taneous support of all patriots in the island, 
whether Liberal, Radical, or Conservative, he 
managed to steer an even keel through billows 
and breakers. Lord Spencer at this time was a 
Satrap of whom any country might be proud. 
He inquired into everything, allowed nothing to 
pass by unnoticed, and lent the weight of his 
presence and support to every useful project — 
such as State-aided emigration — riding as long 
distances as Sidney, Bellingham, or Sir J. Perrot. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 27 I 

But ** be thou pure as ice, chaste as snow, thou 
shalt not escape calumny," was as true of vigilant 
Viceroys as of the ideal Ophelia. Lord Spencer 
was overwhelmed with venomous vituperation by 
the Patriotic press, in which premeditated murder 
was one of the smallest offences laid to his charge, 
and the abominable conduct of one or two officials 
in Dublin handicapped the Lord Lieutenant con- 
siderably. It is a pity that Lord Spencer hunted 
during his second term of office ; every time he 
went out a little legion of soldiers, police, and 
detectives were told off to keep watch and ward 
over the pursuing Prorex, who, rather ill-mounted, 
no longer rode over the peerless pastures of 
Meath and Dublin in his old form, and learnt 
the depth of several ditches by personal plumbing. 
His Excellency at this time was greatly esteemed 
by the gentry of Ireland, with whom he mixed 
very freely. This was quite reason enough for 
his cordial detestation by ** the people," not that 
individually anyone particularly disliked him, but 
obedience even of thought, and the surrender of 
opinion was the mot d'ordre in the Patriotic ranks 
and the ukase had gone forth that Lord Spencer 
had offended the majesty of the people, and was 
to be abhorred by them, ad majorem HibernicR 
gloriaml It is a curious commentary on the 



272 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

coercion of the country that its Press — pictorial 
and printed — was suffered to lampoon, libel, 
deride, and pasquinade the authorities of the land, 
and Her Majesty's representative especially, in a 
style that no other free country in the world 
would tolerate. To disrupted Dublin, no doubt 
with olive-branch intentions, came their Royal 
Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, 
with Prince Eddie, and were Lord and Lady 
Spencer's guests at the Castle. They were 
magnificently entertained by their Excellencies, 
and their reception throughout the country, in 
whatever direction they went, was enthusiastic, 
though in one or two places disloyal emblems 
were displayed, and perhaps words were spoken 
of unseemly purport ; but, on the whole, to speak 
in telegraphese style, ** the great heart of the island 
went out to them," while the Prince increased his 
popularity by persistently refusing police protec- 
tion, and insisting on being allowed to trust his 
mother's subjects, no matter how surcxcitated 
their mood. The balls given in their Royal 
Highnesses* honour at Dublin and Belfast were 
a credit to the taste and public feeling of the 
country. 

Lord Spencer's volte face on retiring from 
office was a painful surprise to many, who had 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 2/3 

not obsen'^ed that his leanings latterly had been 
towards Home Rule. It shows fidelity to his 
political or party leader pushed to very extreme 
lengths, and has, of course, alienated the majority 
of his old friends and allies, while, amongst others, 
it has gained him the support of Mr. W. O'Brien, 
who, having once blackened his reputation, now 
professes his readiness to blacken his boots ; but 
if a strong administrator, Lord Spencer can 
hardly rank as a profound politician, as any one 
who reads his Preface to ** The Handbook of 
Home Rule '' will probably think. That Lord 
Spencer felt his position acutely is most probable. 
His looks for some time showed it, as the follow- 
ing contemporary couplet indicates : — 

"Alas, poor Spencer's grown quite thin — his legs scarce fill 
his cords. 
Quoth Mr. Pat whoe'er grew fat by eating his own words ?" 

One or two funny things happened in the hunting 
field during Lord Spencer's second occupation of 
the Castle. One of his Excellency's A.D.C.'s, a 
full-bearded and very jolly tar, who was about 
the same height, make, and shape as the Lord 
Lieutenant, was pursuing the fox with him and 
a number of sportsmen in Meath. A gallant 
gunner was among them, riding a hard puller 



274 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

who was a little above himself, and was soon 
above the lately-mentioned jolly tar, whom he 
knocked over at a fence. The gunner, as soon 
as he could pull up his fiery and untamed steed, 
was profuse in protestations and apologies, and 
thinking it was the Red Earl whom he had 
temporarily disabled and very nearly stiffened, 
he thought it necessary, after pouring forth his 
regrets, to back out of the Viceroyal presence bare- 
headed, as he might have done at St. James's ! ! 

Lord Spencer originated the cross-country 
races between members of his staff and escort, 
which have since become most fashionable, and 
afford one of the pleasantest reunions of the year. 
The idea enlarged has led to some very exciting 
competitions, of which perhaps the most memorable 
was between a battalion of the Grenadier Guards 
and the i6th Lancers, ending as it did very 
nearly in a dead heat, though the i6th just won 
it. It should be mentioned, however, that one of 
their best horses met with a fatal accident in the 
race. 

Lord Spencer left Dublin on the retirement of 
Mr. Gladstone's Government and the advent to 
power of that of Lord Salisbury, who sent Lord 
Carnarvon to the Castle. It was 7tot a felicitous 
choice, and a very able, if crotchetty, public 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 275 

servant was placed in a position for which he was 
not fitted either by nature or training, though not 
a few of his ancestors had been Lord Lieutenants 
in Ireland. Mr. Parnell has reiterated his state- 
ment that Lord Carnarvon opened negotiations 
with him, or proposed to do so, with reference to 
Home Rule. His Lordship has denied it in his 
place in the House of Lords, and so the matter 
stands at present, but the mere fact of the charge 
being made shows that the Earl must have been 
a little incautious in dealing with a question that 
should not have been touched by him at all. Then 
Lord Carnarvon disregarded the canon that a 
Viceroy must have a first-rate cook and cellar ; and 
his speeches in his progresses through the country 
were more erudite and archaeological than apposite. 
The Dons of Trinity College, I believe, maintain 
that his scholarship was absolutely unimpeach- 
able, and they ought to be able to form a gorxj 
opinion, but scholarship and statesmanship are 
very different entities. There can be no doubt 
that his Excellency meant to devote himself to the 
welfare of Ireland, but he hardly understood the 
subject. Dr. Whately declared that I'^nglish- 
men, as a rule, in his time fancied ihey could 
solve the Irish problem after the briefest study ; 
in five or six weeks they began to grow Keutical 



276 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

of their ability, and ultimately abandoned it in 
despair, as incomprehensible as the Schleswig- 
Holstein mystery or the Eastern Question. 

1886. 

When Lord Salisbury's Government was 
turned out of office on Mr. Jesse CoUings's 
amendment, popularly known as " three acres 
and a cow," Mr. Gladstone, whose followers had 
severely called the Conservative Cabinet to task 
for not renewing the Irish Coercion Act, was 
made Premier, and his friend the Earl of Aber- 
deen became Lord Lieutenant, with Mr. John 
RIorley for Secretary. The latter gentleman 
was mainly an absentee from Ireland, but the 
terribly violent riots in Belfast, that caused 
civic blood to be shed freely, recalled him to 
the Lodge, and to the more active administration 
of his important office. Meanwhile, Lord Aber- 
deen felt that the Fitzwilliam mantle had fallen 
upon him, that he was the Lieutenant of General 
Gladstone, the chosen champion of the Irish 
people, and in all his acts and words he mani- 
fested a decided wish to foster this feeling of 
intense faith in Gladstone government, and its 
administration by himself Indeed, his severer 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 277 

critics maintained that he made it far too evident 
that he was rather Mr. Gladstone's Viceroy or 
officer than the Queen's representative ; but be 
these strictures just or unjust, certain it is that 
he gained the undivided affection of the masses, 
while the classes, as a rule, held somewhat aloof. 
Lady Aberdeen, a clever, enthusiastic lady with 
some talent and much inclination for practice in 
public speaking, seconded his Excellency's views 
with much power and persistence ; nor will the 
afternoon Garden Party which they gave at the 
Lodge, when national woollens and silks of St. 
Patrick's special hue, all, of course, of native 
manufacture, were worn, fade from the recollection 
of those who attended it for years. 

The Home Rule Bill for Ireland introduced 
by Mr. Gladstone was so distasteful to the House 
of Commons that it was thrown out by a majority 
of thirty. This led to a dissolution, and the 
eventual ** disruption and dismemberment" of 
the great Liberal party, the ** Unionists " con- 
ceiving that in such an Imperial crisis it was 
their duty to forsake a leader who in their 
judgment menaced the disruption and dismember- 
ment of the Kingdom. In the meantime. Lord 
and Lady Aberdeen left Dublin Castle, and for 
some days before this event it was known 



278 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

throughout Dublin that the occasion would be 
made use of for a leave-taking such as no Viceroy 
since Lord Fitzwilliam had ever received. The 
procession of the trades and guilds of Dublin 
City reminded the spectator of the imposing page- 
antry' of the O'Connell Centenary celebrated eleven 
years previously, and even the carmen and jarvies 
of the city formed an imposing mounted escort 
to do honour to the departing Vice- King and 
Vice-Oucen. 

1886. 

On the 1 8th September Lord Salisbury's 
new Viceroy, the Marquis of Londonderry, 
with his Marchioness, made their public entry 
into Dublin and took possession of the Castle 
and the Viceregal Lodge. There was no 
popular demonstration of joy or welcome, 
though the Conservative element in the city 
cheered the carriages as they passed through the 
thoroughfares, but the tone of the ** National " 
and Radical press soon made it apparent that, 
no matter what his personal merits might be, 
the new Viceroy was not to be considered a 
** persona grata" to the Hibernian race. Had 
he not borne in early life that title so abhorrent 



(Ti 



The Marquis of Londonoebrv. K.Q. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 279 

to national aspirations — "Castlereagh," which had 
been that of his talented kinsman — 



"That Castlereagh 
(Who) stole the Union away ; 



t» 



and the fact that he was eminently popular in 
Ulster where he had been one of the repre- 
sentatives, in the Lower House, of his county, 
was rather an argument for the negation to him 
of the " popularis aura " in the other provinces of 
his pro-Consulate ; while his good reputation as a 
rider across country, and his liberality as a sports- 
man and encourager of one of Ireland's most 
famous products — high class horses — was turned 
to his disparagement, and one hebdomadal oracle 
likened him to Heliogabalus, meaning, probably, 
his predecessor on the throne of the Caesars, 
Caligula, a most Philhippic Prince ! Considering 
the great ability in organisation shown by the 
National party in Ireland, and the professed 
liberality of their cult, it must be admitted even by 
their own partisans, that they injured their cause 
considerably by such pettinesses as the proscrip- 
tion of fox-hunting, whereby if a certain amount 
of punishment was inflicted upon a few landlords 
infinitely severer punishment was inflicted upon a 
number of hard-working, meritorious men to whom 



28o DUBLIN CASTLE. 

this popular pastime was a source of livelihood. 
After a few years the fatuousness of such proscrip- 
tion became evident, and it was discontinued, but 
a special exception was made against the venatic 
Viceroy, who individually had conquered pre- 
judice and conciliated esteem and regard. His 
Excellency, feeling that the chase should always 
be regarded as a permissive pastime, at once aban- 
doned pursuit, in which he had ever manifested his 
thorough confidence in the honour of the people, 
by coming out without any escort or protection. 
Such conduct was the direct antithesis of that of 
his great Gladstonian predecessor, in whose case 
the chase was made, at least in its external present- 
ment, something more than ** the image of war." 

Lord Londonderry showed on several occa- 
sions that he could take broad and statesmanlike 
views, and that he could enunciate them in clear, 
well expressed language. He performed all the 
duties connected with his office punctually and 
fairly, but with a Cabinet Minister for Secretary 
he felt that it was his duty to leave the govern- 
ment of the country mainly to him, and so cause 
no loss of power by any possible appearance of 
divergence of views. Hence, to a certain extent, 
the Viceregal policy was one of unselfish self- 
effacement, in the interests of his Queen and 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 28 1 

country. How well, how right royally, the social 
side of the Castle rule was conducted Lord 
Londonderry's many visitors from England and 
his Irish guests will all admit. His court will 
take rank with those of Lord Eglinton, Lord 
Spencer, and the Duke of Abercorn, while Lady 
Londonderry kept up the stately succession of 
Vice-Queens, who were Queens of Beauty as 
well as social leaders. In September, 1889, Lord 
Londonderry left the Castle of Dublin (where he 
had held office for some months, only at Lord 
Salisbury's special request), for his estates in 
England imperatively called for his presence. 
The undress Lev^e of their Excellencies was 
more largely attended than any similar previous 
one, and the procession from the Castle to the 
railway station was cheered lustily as it passed 
through Nassau Street. In fact, Lord London- 
derry's popularity had grown greatly in his three 
years of office, if unacknowledged. To show 
how completely and cordially his Excellency 
and Mr. Balfour pulled together it may be here 
mentioned that he lent the Hall of St. Patrick 
to his Secretary when the latter wished to 
entertain a larger number of guests than the 
Lodge in the Park could accommodate. The 
ball proved a thorough social success. 



282 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

1889. 

Sir Laurence Dundas, Earl of Zetland, who, 
at a time when, owing chiefly to the immense 
depreciation in landed estate and the silent decre- 
ment of agricultural produce, there was some little 
difificulty experienced by Lord Salisbury in find- 
ing an adequate successor to Lord Londonderry 
in the Viceregal office, came forward manfully to 
fill a post which his predecessor's splendidly lavish 
liberality had made a more costly corvie than 
ever, belongs to a family who have been con- 
spicuous for official ability through many genera- 
tions. His Excellency and Lady Zetland are not 
unknown in Irekmd, for they were frequent 
guests of Lord and Lady Londonderry, and Lord 
Zetland occupied a leading position in several 
good gallops with the Meath hounds during two 
seasons. It seems a little hard that what is 
called (rather curiously) by one or two leading 
Radical prints ** his first official act," namely, the 
purchase of an Irish jaunting car, should be 
attributed to the most paltry and pitiful motives. 
"Noblesse," in his case was '*obHgeante;" all 
his tastes and interests prompted him 7iot to go 
to Ireland. Lord Zetland is connected with the 
old and honourable family of Talbot in Ireland. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 283 



CHAPTER VI. 
A Selection of Secretaries. 

" Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime, 
And departing leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time." 

I-rONGFELLOW. 

With the progress of civilisation comes the 
division of labour in all its departments, material 
as well as intellectual. In the earlier times of the 
Viceroyalty, the holder of the Sword of State, or 
" gladius authoritatis," had to fill many parts. He 
presided at Parliaments and ** Star Chambers/' and 
in the Law Courts ; led the Army against the foe, 
and in one or two instances was expected to be, 
like his sovereign in England, " fidei defensor,*' 
a propagandist and evangeliser, in fact he had to 
fill as many functions as occasionally fall to the lot 
of the Chief Justice of Sierra-Leone, a British 
Consul in remote regions, or the Deputy Governor 
of that turtle territory, the island of Ruatan ! 

T 



284 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

When Ireland became more or less assimilated to 
England (in theory if not absolutely in practice), 
this plurality of functions was found impossible, 
and Presidents of the Provinces at first relieved 
the Lord Lieutenant of the time being from a 
portion of his heavy burdens. Then when 
Parliament became tJu Power, and the bureau and 
desk supplanted the guard room and parade 
ground, there arose a necessity for the creation of 
Departments or ** Portfolios," whose holders were 
responsible to the Viceroy, though each Chief of 
Department was tolerably absolute within its pur- 
views and limits. A Commander-in-Chief ad- 
ministered the forces of the island ; Religion had 
its Hierarchy; Law its chancellor, judges, and 
official exponents; but for the actual administration 
of the affairs of the island, the Chief Secretary 
had to answer to Parliament, on which he depended 
for his ** supply." 

It seems now almost impossible to fix a date for 
the creation of the Chief Secretary's Department. 
It is very possible that in comparatively remote 
times the Lord Lieutenant of the time being 
desirous of having a representative in the House 
of Commons got his Private Secretary returned 
for some borough or other that was amenable to 
Crown influence ; but this is only a conjecture. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 285 

However, there is an actual record of the office in 
the year 1623, when, however, it had not become 
a power much less iAe power in Ireland, seeing 
that patronage, the chief lever available, was 
entirely vested in the Lord Lieutenant. In 1798 
Lord Castlereagh, I believe the first Irishman 
appointed, held the office on the resignation of 
Pelham; Charles Abbott held it in 1801 ; Mr. 
Wickham in 1802 ; while In a few cases we find 
that the Secretariat was the portal to the Vice- 
royalty, as, for instance, in the case of Lord St. 
Germans, Lord Camden, and Lord Morpeth, 
afterwards Lord Carlisle. Of these men Lord 
Castlereagh ys?^z facile princeps, and to show the 
confidential nature of the office which was always 
before his time entrusted to English hands, it 
may be mentioned that Lord Camden, in writing 
to Lord Castlereagh prior to the appointment, 
says " there appeared to be every inclina- 
tion in his (i.e., Lord ComwalHs') mind to 
overcome the prejudice which is felt here 
against the Secretary being an Irishman in your 
favour, and he felt all the delicacy and responsi- 
bility of your situation now, as deserving every 
attention hereafter." We know the great work 
that Castlereagh accomplished in effecting the 
union of the islands ; we know, too, how " he who 



286 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Stands upon a slippery place makes nice of no 
vile hold to stay him up." He had to deal with 
" Patriots " — he knew them well — and he acted 
according to his estimate. At the Congress of 
Vienna Lord Castlereagh was perhaps the most 
powerful subject in Europe. As an intrepid clear- 
headed official, capable of immense toil in the 
service of the State, he will ever be a conspicuous 
exemplar. 

Another Irishman who filled the office of Chief 
Secretary with great ability — an ability not to be 
wholly measured by his speeches in Parliament, 
though some of them were powerful and per- 
suasive too — was Lord Naas, afterwards Earl of 
Mayo, who died in discharging the duties of 
Viceroy of India. 

The Earls of Mayo and Marquises of Clan- 
ricarde claim a common ancestor, and Mayo was 
one of the titles of the Clanricardes. Richard 
Southwell Bourke, the eldest of a band of brothers 
who have one and all fought the battle of life 
bravely and well, was not born titularly noble or 
rich, and as he owed his early education, as well 
as his academic teaching, to Ireland, so he may 
be said to have remained a thorough Irishman, 
and racy of her soil, all his life ; for he dearly 
loved his native land, of which he was proud, and 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 287 

which he strove to benefit, advance, and improve 
according to the Hght that was in him, though 
that h'ght may seem tenebrous to some wlio 
arrogate for themselves and their co- thinkers a 
quasi-patent of patriotism and Hibernian heroism. 
After travelling for some months through Russia, 
Mr. Bourke — a Conservative by profession and 
tradition — wrote an account of his experiences 
in the land of the Tzar, which might be termed 
by many Radical in tone, but which is perhaps 
a proof that true liberty is the basis of the Con- 
servative party, which, avoiding declamations on 
the natural rights of man, and such sickly senti- 
mentalities, proved itself the friend of liberality 
and progress on many occasions, though perhaps 
it occasionally made shipwreck on such rocks as 
Protection, both in Church and State. 

The generous and liberal views enunciated by 
Mr. Bourke brought him into some notice, and 
his pleasant personality did the rest ; for it made 
him hosts of friends wherever he went, and his 
good judgment, solid sense, and attention to 
detail marked him for future office. His great 
uncle, the Earl of Mayo, had given him a com- 
mission in the County Militia — the Kildare Rifles 
— a corps d'elite, composed, for the most part, of 
xkiQ, fine fleur oi the noblemen and gentlemen of 



288 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

that aristocratic county. Lord Heytesbury had 
attached him to his Staff as "gentleman at large," 
which was a pleasant introduction to the best 
Dublin society, in a becoming uniform, whose 
light blue facings found much favour, 'tis said, 
with the belles of the period ; but farming was 
his trade when the potato blight set in, and made 
every man, woman, and child in Ireland an 
almoner to relieve the surrounding distress. In 
this labour of love Mr. Bourke did yeoman's 
service, and, though Conservatism was not 
popular in Kildare, he gained the suffrages of 
his countrymen in an election for its representa- 
tion in the House of Commons, in spite of strong 
opposition. 

On his father's inheriting the title of Mayo, 
Mr. Bourke became Lord Naas, and soon after 
his entrance into the House of Commons found 
his fate in Miss Blanche Wyndham, who proved 
a true helpmeet in all his triumphs and difficulties. 
When Lord Derby came into office in 1849 he 
offered him the post of Chief Secretary — a signal 
compliment to a comparatively untried man — 
he accepted it ; and getting returned for Coleraine 
represented it for five years, when Cockermouth 
made him her M.P., and retained him for eleven 
years in her service. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 2bg 

Lord Naas was fortunate in his chief, the Earl 
of Eglinton, as well as in the permanent Under- 
Secretary, Sir Thomas Larcom, who may be 
compared to the solicitor who gets up all the facts 
of the case for the counsels' opinion and review. 
Lord Derby's ministrj' was not long-Hved, but it 
returned to place and power in 1S58, and again 
Lords Eglinton and Naas filled the same official 
positions with the same complete harmony. Lord 
Naas' liberality of views is proved by his having 
anticipated Mr. Gladstone in his efforts at land 
reform and compensation to tenants for improve- 
ments, but his views proved premature then. In 
1866 Mr. D'Israeli came into office, and with 
the Duke of Abercorn for chief, Lord Naas 
was again the occupant of the Chief Secretary's 
Lodge, where Lady Naas' great social talents 
found splendid scope, and her reunions were 
universally voted delightful. The Fenian rising 
at Tallaght Hill was promptly put down by a 
Government that was well-informed and could 
hardly be taken by surprise ; but if the feeble 
Fenians had not been quickly crushed at the first 
hostile movement, an insurrection might have 
grown out of the attempt, and the tragedies of 
'98 been repeated. However, the constabulary 
and the climate promptly gave it the coup de grace. 



290 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

With the complete crushing of this Fenian 
fiasco, which took its origin and colour from the 
greater Ireland in America, Lord Mayo's (for his 
father s death had put him in possession of the first 
title) official connection with Ireland ceased, as he 
was offered the Governor-Generalship of Canada, 
or the reversion of the Viceroyalty of India, by 
the Premier, and he accepted the latter. It is a 
matter of history how, in the midst of a most 
successful administration of our Oriental Empire, 
Lord Mayo was assassinated by a fanatic while 
inspecting some prisons in the Andaman Islands, 
his Lordship having ever taken the deepest 
interest in prison discipline and prison ameliora- 
tion as a system. The enormous crowds that 
attended the funeral of one who to many was a 
political opponent, attest the estimate formed of 
him in his native country. His remains rest in 
the old cemetery overlooked by an ivy-mantled 
ruin — once a church — at the Gate of Palmerstown, 
his Kildare residence. 

** The dust of some is Irish earth, 
Among their own they rest ; 
And the same land that gave them birth 
Has caught them to her breast" 

As a sportsman Lord Mayo was quite in the 



"VC^BB 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 291 

first rank ; he took the Kildare hounds at a time 
when the finances of the Hunt were at a very low 
ebb. He showed splendid sport, though a welter 
weight, arid left the association to his successor 
in a flourishing finartcial condition. He was as 
earnest in sport as he was at his official work. 
" Omnis in hoc sum." his motto ; he wished, as an 
M F.H., to win the Kildare Hunt Cup, and he 
won it with a horse called Hornpipe. The Peel, 
known as " Archie," rode him. 

Another Conservative Secretary to whom 
the Chief Secretaryship was a step in the 
official ladder was Sir Michael Edward Hicks- 
Beach, who twice filled the arduous office and 
very nearly lost his eyesight from too close 
attention to the business of his office. Modera 
tion is often voted Laodicean lukewarmness when 
political passion is at fever heat ; we know 
by their unseemly exultation at Sir Michael's 
affliction {an exultation, we trust, confined to a 
very small circle) that the Nationalists .did not 
love him, and as a body the Irish landowners did 
not regard him very highly, because they con- 
sidered that he did not lend them sufficient armed 
force to enforce the decrees of the law in their 
favour ; no one, however, ever questioned Sir 
Michael's assiduity and anxiety to do right under 




292 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

circumstances of extreme difficulty. Sir Michael 
was a member of the Cabinet while Chief Secre- 
tary. He hunted while in office, and rode hard 
and straight. His successor, the Right Hon. 
Arthur James Balfour, stands forth on the page 
of contemporary history as having earned more 
odium from the Nationalist party in Ireland than 
any of his predecessors in office, by his un- 
swerving enforcement of the law under all 
circumstances, and his total disregard of the 
angry voices of citizens prava jubentium ; he has 
not sought popularity, and he certainly has not 
gained it, but his subordinates admire him greatly 
because they feel confident of his thorough support 
if they endeavour to do their duty. He has not 
done anything for the landowners save in the way 
of support of legal claims, but they feel the strength 
of even that support, moral as well as physical, 
and rally round him. Whether " post hoc " or 
''propter hoc" comparative prosperity has re- 
turned to Ireland. Under his firm sway coercion 
is in reality felt to be emancipation from tyranny 
by many thousands, and no law-abiding subject 
has as yet suffered from its administration. 

Among great Chief Secretaries the Right 
Hon. W. E. Forster certainly merits mention. 
No braver man ever kept the Privy Seal or 



t 




The Right Hon. A. J. B*lfouh. M.P. 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 293 

endeavoured to serve Ireland more heartily or 
effectively. He had earned the gratitude of 
thousands in the west by his liberality and 
philanthropy in the famine years, but politics 
know no gratitude. In 1880 he accepted the 
appointment of Chief Secretary to Ireland, from 
an innate belief that he understood the needs 
of the nation, and could bring her back to the 
paths of law and order. Armed with coercive 
powers more anti-constitutional than had ever 
been claimed before, he suppressed the Land 
League, imprisoned the leaders of the National 
party, and filled the gaols with men whom he 
** suspected," though sometimes without any 
rational cause whatever. These high-handed 
measures brought on him the intense hatred of 
the more advanced politicians, and his life was 
often in great danger, his escapes marvellous, 
for he took no precautions and recklessly risked 
his life, hardly knowing the meaning of the word 
fear. His chief was Lord Cowper, a most intrepid 
Governor, and when his Excellency and his Chief 
Secretary found that they were not supported, as 
they expected, by the Government, they resigned. 
Mr. Forster took an early opportunity of vindi- 
cating his official conduct in Parliament, and his 
indictment of Mr. Parnell in the House was 



294 DUBLIN CASTLE. 

Ciceronianly strong. That Mr. Forster was quite 
right in his diagnosis of Ireland, and that the rank 
and file of her countrymen were misled by what 
he called ** village ruffians" seems true, but his 
methods of meeting the evil appears questionable 
and pedagoguish. He was a brave statesmanlike 
man, most liberal in hand and heart, in purse as 
well as in profession, "integer vitae scelerisque 
purus," a Quaker with the virtues of ^*the Friends" 
and few of their faults. 

Another historical Chief Secretary was Edward 
Geoffrey Smith Stanley, who did much towards 
settling the terrible tithe war, and establishing 
mixed education in Ireland, noble monuments to 
statesmanship, but almost eclipsed by his sub- 
sequent share in the great measure of negro 
emancipation. O'Connell and he were rival 
orators and fierce Parliamentary foes. Perhaps 
his fame as Lord Stanley was even greater than 
that which he gained as Lord Derby and Premier 
of England twice, but Lord Derby had many 
crowns, and was as eminent in literature as in 
politics. With the Chief Secretaryship of Sir 
Robert Peel, one of the ablest and honestest 
statesmen of the century, will ever be associated 
the establishment of the Irish Constabulary, a 
body that has done almost more to civilise Ireland 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 295 

than any other, and which has ever proved 
a credit to the country. His eldest son and 
successor, Sir Robert Peel, was also Chief Secre- 
tary in Ireland during Lord Derby's Administra- 
tion. He \v'as popular vfith many, and ** the 
Rollicking Robert," as he has been called, left 
many friends in Ireland, where he was very 
outspoken and liberal in hand and heart. 

It may not be generally known that the 
preliminaries of a duel were actually arranged 
between Sir Robert Peel and Daniel O'Connell, 
to come off in France or Belgium, and that both 
belligerents were on their way thither, when the 
latter was arrested in Jermyn Street, London, 
and, of course, bound over to keep the peace. 

Lord Carlingford, better known as Chichester 
Fortescue, was another eminent Chief Secretary, 
and his wife. Lady Waldegrave, a queen of 
society. 

In connection with Lord Naas' Secretaryship 
it may be mentioned here that he was constantly 
threatened, and that his friends feared that in his 
nightly rides between his office at the Castle and 
the Lodge in the Phoenix Park he might be fired 
at., but he took no precautions beyond riding at a 
brisk pace, and had no police protection. 



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